Books take us places. Beth Ann Bayus has advice for adults who want to take a different road with children’s book classics.
I suppose if you’re going to continue to read my stuff, we’ll need to be clear about one thing right up front. I’m not your typical “childhood classics” fan. Very few of the hundreds of books in our house (yes, there are literally hundreds, with a box or basket or shelf stuffed full of them in every room from the kitchen to the bathroom to the basement) fall into that category. Sure, “Velveteen Rabbit” ranks as one of my top five books, ever — even as an adult — but beyond that and the full Beatrix Potter series (a gift from my sister, Meredith’s godmother), most everything else is kind of quirky. Probably because the books that could be labeled “classic” are subject to much parody and instant suspicion on my part. Take Where the Wild Things Are, for example. Although my husband’s absolute favorite childhood book (and hence, the reason it’s in one of the baskets), I have to wonder at the sense of showing a child hideously scary monsters just as you’re putting them to sleep. And what’s up with some of the pages suddenly not having any words on them? That always threw me as a kid, too.
Add this unorthodox reading selection to that the fact that Meredith is allowed (and always has been since birth) to read whatever she wants to in our house (from the Costco flyer to the adult gild-edged books on the “top shelves”), and you’ll quickly see that hers is not a typical children’s library.
For instance, I’ve never bought a Dr. Seuss book for Meredith, and never will. (The few she has have either been gifts from folks not knowing my aversion to all things Seuss, or hand-me-overs from others simply not caring.) This aversion started as a child. I remember thinking as I was being read Green Eggs and Ham at the library story hour how funny it was to hear people talking in rhyme and realizing that people don’t really talk that way. Hence, I dismissed Dr. Seuss books as not “real” books worthy of my attention. If it wasn’t a “real” conversation, why should I bother to listen to it, I thought?
Of course, the story lines didn’t help much either. Why not just throw the Cat in the Hat out of the house, lock the door and be done with it? I wondered. Silly kids, just stop letting him back in, and your problems are solved, I thought to myself. Take control of the situation, for goodness sake! After all, it’s your house, and he’s just a cat!
And don’t even get me started on Are You My Mother? by P.D Eastman, a protégé of Theodor Geisel (the true identity behind the good Dr.) Child abandonment. What a cheerful topic to present to youngsters already in the grips of separation anxiety. I remember not even being able to look at the cover of that book as a child without bursting into tears – - the big crocodile kind that rolled down my cheeks and fell on my chubby little thighs. In fact, Meredith came into possession of the book as part of a cruel family joke played out at our baby shower when it suspiciously appeared in the gift pile with the rest of pastel-bowed boxes (without a card, of course). I personally suspect my brother Bernie, but I have no way of proving that he’s to blame for the cycle of literary cruelty now passed on to my unsuspecting daughter. In an effort to break that cycle, I admit I’ve taken to hiding the book at the bottom of whatever basket it manages to resurface in, and am not beyond throwing it out all together, as re-gifting would just prolong the agony for another unsuspecting child.
And finally, while, Oh the Places You’ll Go may have some merit later in life as a college graduation present, the philosophical message is lost, I’m afraid, on a mere two-year-old. Frankly, as catchy as the phrase, “You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes” may be, it’s still not something Meredith needs to learn until she’s forced to by the six-year-olds on the playground. For now, it, too, is banished to the bottom of the basket….
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