Creepy, irritating children's books

It's amazing how well-aligned our opinions are about creepy or just plain irritating children's books. And here I thought Hayley and I were the only ones who had a problem with Big Nutbrown Hare! Based on your comments, Parenthackers' least favorite books are:

• Love You Forever (creepy!)
• Guess How Much I Love You (oneupmanship!)
• The Giving Tree (codependency! environmental irresponsibility!)
• The Rainbow Fish (bribery!)
• Curious George (poaching! smoking!)

...plus many more (including all of the Thomas the Tank Engine books). But there's a ray of hope...the winner of I Love You More: Corina (whose most annoying book is Tomie dePaola's Tomie's Little Mother Goose)! Email me your mailing address, Corina, and I'll get that book in the mail to you ASAP.

Editor's note: this list is a followup on the comments left here and was meant in good fun. Obviously I didn't do a great job converying the tongue-in-cheek tone I was going for, because several of you found this post irritating. So, apologies to those who actually thought Parent Hacks was advocating censorship...that's most definitely not the case. BUT. I still think Big Nutbrown Hare has a few issues he needs to work out. -- Ed.

Comments

[Daddy Dre]

Fortunately I'm blissfully ignorant of all the titles listed except The Giving Tree and Curious George, both of which are my three year old's favorites. Maybe it comes down to how you spin the stories but The Giving Tree has been an excellent opportunity for me to teach about aging and relationships and of all the Curious George stories there's one page with one line about George smoking a pipe. I've always just skipped it. My son doesn't know any different and we have some great phrases to use like "sometimes little monkeys forget" and "a naughty little monkey". He knows when he's been a naughty little monkey...

[Rob]

Yes! Love You Forever is hands-down the creepiest book on my kids' shelf. On some level it's moving but on another it's quite dark and disturbing, not to mention the whole Oedipal thing. I love most of Munsch's books but this is one I dread reading.

[Chris]

Whoa, I think you're missing the genius behind The Giving Tree. To me, it is a wonderful metaphor of parenting. We give everything we have for our children: our time, our money, at times our sanity. And we keep giving, even when they mess up, even when they show no gratitude, even when they don't see us for years at a time. I'm not sure why, but it's worth it and makes us happy. Dare I say the book even contains religious overtones? Well, call it irritating, but it's still one of my lifelong favorites.

[cabbey]

woohooo! congrats to my wife!

[meredith]

It is an ongoing argument on my parenting message board.

Is "The Giving Tree" a beautiful story about how we give all we can to our children or how we so badly need to teach our children to appreciate what we do without sucking the life out of us?

Is "Love You Forever" a lovely story about the relationship of mom and son or a manual on what we don't want our daughters to grow up to marry?

I am not familiar with the other ones, but these two are not part of our collection. Creepy is right!

[Ana]

I absolutely agree with Daddy Dre's comment - it's all in how you spin the stories. Don't know much about any of the titles other than The Giving Tree and Curious George, but both have many redeeming qualities. There are several lessons that can be gleaned from The Giving Tree such as unconditional love, aging, and even selfishness and how it affects others. Curious George also has many valuable lessons - too many to name.
I do believe that when reviewing what may be not so satisfactory with a book, you MUST be responsible and take into consideration the context and age the book was written in. Just because something isn't acceptable now, doesn't mean it wasn't at some point and this doesn't mean the now-unacceptable things were put in the book to intentionally be irresponsible (referring specifically to the "poaching" and "smoking" referenced above for CG). We have to remember - these are just stories meant to entertain and teach and if you don't like one little piece of it, use your imagination and change it to make it into something you do like - hey there's another lesson to teach your kids!

[GeekLady]

Love You Forever is hands down the creepiest children's book ever written.

It's even creepier when you have a copy you Can't Get Rid Of, because it was a gift to your husband from your mother in law when he GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL.

[Greg C]

Seconds on Rainbow Fish.......

[Aaron H.]

Wow. Literal much?

For the couple of books here that I am most familiar with (Giving Tree, Love You Forever) these things are METAPHORS. Fables, if you'd like, to illustrate some larger, more complicated and difficult to explain things like unconditional love, aging, and the circle of life.

You do realize that "The Scorpion and the Frog" isn't a story glorifying inner-species violence, right?

[Lucy]

I dont know if I would criticize Curious George because of poaching and smoking. I think we (as a society) have been far to careful to take reality out of books and not so careful about presenting clean television.

My children cannot find an original version of Dr. Doolittle or Little Black Sambo, books that present a reality viewpoint, but were not considered "politically correct." I don't agree with racism in any way, but I also do not hide from my children that it happens.

However, these same children can watch highly oversexualized teens and preteens with unrealistic lifestyles and horrible attitudes on the Disney channel, on Nick, almost anywhere. Disney's movies, even the movies directed to small toddlers, are all about acceptance of everything and no moral values.

Something wrong with this? What struck me was doing a comparison of exactly the same Disney book (Cinderella) that I had from childhood (maybe a 50s version?) and the Cinderella book published in the 90s. Look at her dress....

[Lucy]

To clarify, the books I mentioned above are just examples of what I considered over-censorship.

And I have no issues with acceptance, but do take issue with Disney's targeting the very young with topics that would not naturally come up in their life until much later. Why isn't this censored if the books are? (That was my point, in case I came across all wrong.)

[AmyS]

Literal much? No, but my preschooler sure is! I have never liked Love you Forever and the Giving Tree, even as a child. I also refused to let my mother read the Velveteen Rabbit to me because of the horror of all the child's favorite toys being burned -- what a cruel thing to do to a child. I didn't care about the rabbit being made real -- I didn't identify with the rabbit.

I try to read children's books with the sensibility of the child I might read it to, not the maturity of the adult who wrote it. My daughter thinks Love you Forever is silly and wonders why the heck the old woman would sneak into the man's room at night -- "that's just weird" says the 4.5 year old and I don't have the will to try to explain what the author is trying to convey.

Now I try to weed through the books she grabs off the library shelves before we check out!

[Kerri Karvetski]

Geez, aren't we going overboard trying to create the perfect world for our kids that we're driving them and us crazy? Don't we have enough guilt and anxiety in our lives without being so completely...OK. I'll stop there.

Here's a book FOR the PARENT reading list:

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, by Judith Warner

Long live cupcakes, The Giving Tree and Curious George.

Keeping it real,

kk

[stinkydad]

...And that "Wheels on the Bus" story -now that one promotes a true environmental quandry! Sure, it's public transportation, but it's obviously an older model that has no pollution controls and totally disregards all safety enhancements made in the last 20 years.

I guess that also means all those biblical kids stories are out, too, being based on a very violent book that promotes disfunctional group dynamics!

It seems this "worst books" topic is almost completely polarizing; you either agree completely or disagree completely. The really interesting point is that those that think that the list is wrong all mention the same reason; the books are analogies of real life lessons and not meant to be taken literally. We shield our kids from natural issues such as love and death, but regularly expose and even train them in superficial values that have no chance in preparing them to be happy later in life...better to read them Curious George and then explain why he shouldn't smoke. Talk about the issues on a level your kid can understand, then six months later, raise the bar a little. Parents, our job is to read the stories and explain the lessons behind the words and prepare our offspring to make the world a better place when it is theirs.

[Alan]

*Guess How Much I Love You*?!?

It's definitely in the reading then. I'm sure that if that book were read in the snarky voices I hear coming from all the little disney "princesses" running around then, yes, it would be inappropriate.

However, when read (every night, for a year) in a loving conversation between a child and a parent, it's a terrific book. We have two copies.

[tara jean]

Wow. So many days I'm right here with ParentHacks, thinking, "man, these folks are so smart and so witty, and so with it", but not today.

Today, I'm worried as an English teacher, if you're going to be calling my superintendent in eleven years when your kids hit high school. I can hear the cries already, "how dare that woman teach a book where the main character calls a prostitute, drops out of school, and deals with his own mental illness".

And here I thought the world had gotten less conservative since "Catcher in the Rye" was published fifty something years ago. . . apparently not.

If you're already censoring your kids' books now, what will you do down the road, when they're asked to read really challenging works?

[jbdad]

Give me a break!

I used to read "Love You Forever" to my daughter. One time after reading it to her I made a deathly serious and creepy face and told her that I loved her so much that she would never be allowed to leave home after she grows up. She saw right through the my lame attempt to scare her and it is a running joke around the house that our daughter will never leave home.

[Parent Hacks Editor]

Folks! Come on now! Obviously the tongue-in-cheek nature of this post did not come through -- this was all meant in good fun. It may make more sense if you read the original comments here:

http://www.parenthacks.com/2007/12/endless-love-i.html

No one's talking about censorship or anything else so serious.

[Parent Hacks Editor]

Oh, and momma, I deleted your comment because I don't allow anyone to insult the readership here. Disagreement is welcome (as most of the other comments on this post illustrate), but namecalling isn't.

[The Educator]

Ha! This is a fun thread. My daughter enjoys me reading the "Guess How Much I Love You" book to her. After the first 20 times, the book has ceased to be creepy and I actually kind of dig it now. (Oh horrors! I've been converted.)

[hostile17]

re: love you forever, i think it's creepy to me and lots of others for the following reason: the allegorical message that some of you mention is really hard to find because of the very earnest writing and illustration. there's nothing stylized about the *appearance* of the book or the tone of the words, so it's hard for me to see that perhaps the author had a symbolic purpose, rather than a realistic one. whereas w/ shel silverstein, the drawings are much more minimalist, the writing more concise. this allows space for allegory, i think. does this make sense?

[Amy]

Wow. This was a polarizing post. But before my son understood, I'd read my own version of Rainbow Fish (a gift), wherein the selfish, not-special thug fish extort everything special about Rainbow Fish until he's just as dull as them. Agreed: Icky. For a great "I'll love you no matter what" book, we adore "I Love You Stinky Face."

[Steph.]

In reading the comments on this, and on the last post, I am amazed. And, truthfully, I think that society has gotten way too politically correct and entirely too serious!

There are several books, The Giving Tree for instance, that I have loved since I was a child. My daughter just picked out the Gingerbread Baby that someone mentioned. I read it to my kids last night and we laughed at it all through. There are some books that annoy me, but compared to what comes out nowadays, boring princess books and such, I like some of the older ones!

I'll give one great one that we loved for my older child--it has a good message, the most gorgeous illustrations, and it's just a fun read although it is longer--The Quiltmaker's Gift. Someone may write in now that they hate it, but we love it!

[Angela]

I have always had big issues with the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer story. All the reindeer hate his guts UNTIL Santa puts him in charge, then suddenly "all the reindeer loved him"? Wrong on so many levels. Arrrgh, I hate it.

[Angela]

P.S. Interesting...reading all the comments I realized I have been interpreting the Giving Tree a little differently. I have always interpreted the Giving Tree book as a message about humanity's relationship to the earth...how we take every damn thing until there's almost nothing left. To me, the the old man at the end is all of humanity--our collective foolishness. I assumed this was Silverstein's message. I never saw the parental interpretation but I see it now that people have mentioned it.

Too many years as an English major, ha!