For context, I grew up in a majority-minority county populated largely by the descendants of slaves. My mother was quite literary and regularly read to us: one favorite was T. S. Eliot's *Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats* (1939). Another favorite was a book of Brer Rabbit animal fables collected by Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908). So you and your readers have to imagine this: a middle-class white woman (and gifted mimic) reading aloud to her children, in something of a caricature of African-American dialect, and during the Civil Rights Era, the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby in the brier patch. I strongly suspect that scene will make some of your readers uncomfortable, even if a case can be made that the original folktales on which Harris based his adaptations were patently subversive with respect to white supremacy and oppression.
Do the stories we read our children contain the seeds of their own critique? I wonder why that can't be the main criterion. Put differently, don't read your kids garbage, and rest easy that you're doing the right thing.
As with anything regarding children, discernment is required. Hence my wife’s concern about my introducing stories too heavy or dark for Naomi’s age. Hence my statement about interjecting myself into my narration of The Indian in the Cupboard to explain parts of the story—assumptions and behaviors of the characters as presented by the author—I found objectionable.
Something is only “garbage” if it’s inappropriate for the context or the purposes to which you bring it.
Brer Rabbit is an important cultural artifact. I worked for over a year in West Africa, in a region that historically was one of the areas that suffered from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. To help me learn the local language, Wolof, I read a collection of folktales in Wolof, and a recurring character in those tales was a trickster rabbit that strongly reminded me of Brer Rabbit.
I once developed a first-year seminar on trickster figures (having done my dissertation on deceit in Roman literature, law, and society), so I see the validity of your comment even more readily than I otherwise might.
You’re passing on a wonderful tradition she will never forget—but you know that. When I was a newspaper editor, I got to know all the kids in those towns. When I saw their parents, I never let the opportunity go by without telling them how great their kids were, and that it reflected well on their parenting. Witnessing behavior of good kids gives me faith in the next generation. Wish there was more of it. So, keep up the good work!
Lloyd Alexander, a great storyteller and world-builder, gives an additional issue. His characters live interesting adventures in worlds with no "god." Yet they live with purpose and values. Plus, Alexander grasps the "secret of the kingdom of God" better than some of my seminary profs did. So, if course, I read them aloud to my children and grandchildren.
All critics of these books are doing are projecting their personal, contemporary politics on the works of authors working before they were born (in many cases) writing in a completely different social and historical context that their thick heads don't know existed.
You don't need to equate the content of the stories with the personal politics of their authors- you read the stories to children or let them read them and let the story stand by itself. They want to know the people and lands in the stories, not the biographies of the authors. If anything, discussing the authors' backgrounds and beliefs should be done as a secondary supplement, if at all, and with the understanding that they were and are flawed and fallible human beings, not outright villains.
Does it matter to know that they owned slaves or hated Jews to appreciate their work? Absolutely not! Particularly if they are writing works that have virtually nothing to do with the "real" world.
It is supremely insulting to both the intelligence of the audience, regardless of what age they are, and the intentions of the authors to think that the promotion and acceptance of established or unwanted social norms is the object here. If anything, it is the opposite...
I want to hit “like” about 20 times on this. If a writer is not free to write and a parent is not free to read, we may as well pack it in and admit that our culture is artistically as well as morally bankrupt. The greatest moments of wonder, revelation, and laughter are contained in “problematic” books.
I agree with everything here, and it's one of the things that is so valuable about shared reading. When my daughter was small and we were reading the Little Prairie books (which had been read to me as a child), it opened up so much discussion, and a valuable lesson in perception. How many of our beliefs will be called into question by future generations? How do we know the history and progression of bigotry if we do not find it in primary sources? Reading those books in particular as an adult, I was appalled at Laura's mother's attitude to the Native Americans, but I also recognised Laura Ingalls Wilder's reporting of it: neither apologetic nor condoning, but presented in context.
Exactly. When I read those passages to Naomi from Little House, I explained the context, why a person might feel that way, and what I found wrong with it. People being people—including our faults—doesn’t spoil literature. It’s just part of living in the world.
There is a scene in 'Little House on the Prairie' where Laura asks her Pa why the Indians have to move away and Pa gives her the boilerplate Manifest Destiny reasoning, but Laura is not satisfied and persists in questioning until Pa finally tells her to be quiet and go to sleep. As a child, I related more to Laura's point of view than her Pa and Ma, so that scene and several others like it in the books raised in my developing mind moral questions about the pioneer movement of the 19th century, questions that prepared me to understand and acknowledge as an adult that European settlers had wronged the original inhabitants of North America.
My 8YO and I have just finished David Attenborough ‘A Life On Our Planet’ in a similar way to you (he’s a budding biologist) and now doing Matt Haig’s ‘Evie and the Animals’. Reading the Attenborough book with him makes it all the more urgent and meaningful.
You hit the nail on the head; it's a story. Our "isms" get in the way of everything. We are free to read even the bleakest, darkest stories from Poe to Hawthorne to the wild adventures bequeathed to us by Tolkien, and whoever wrote Beowulf's poem. Why? Because He freed us. The true wisdom, Jesus Christ, said, "none shall snatch them out of My hand." What a fine promise to deliver to us, who, through God's mercy, find ways to talk to all our neighbors in story, because Christ is in every one of them.
I love good enough parents because they self depreciate while doing their utmost best. I hear you. Welcome to the club. Child is lucky to be read to. My 13 year old teen still says - not often mind ( and I miss that, they grow up so quick) ‘mama put me to bed I’ve chosen the book’
Sorry to double up on my comments here, but this topic hits home. I think an author's belief system shouldn't stop you from reading their books; no writer, particularly pre-modern, is going to hold opinions that align with ours. Charles Dickens, despite being progressive for his time, was still a racist by today's standards, and had very little good to say about South Asians. You'll see some anti-semitism in the writers of the Brontës as well. And we all know what Dostoevsky thought about Jews. But I still read these without hesitation.
But I have to admit that there are some extreme cases that still bother me and make it hard for me to bridge the gap: Honestly, I can't bring myself to read HP Lovecraft (it doesn't help that I'm not a fan of his genre), but even so, his hatred went well beyond just being a product of his times. Knut Hamsun is going to be another challenge. I still haven't picked up Growth of the Soil despite owning it (twice; I got rid of it once because of the author, then decided that was rash). *But the man gave his Nobel Prize to Joseph Goebbels.* That's a tough journey for me to make, I have to admit.
There's also a novel I've long wanted to read, The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis. But I learned he owned quite a large number of slaves. I'll still probably read it, in fact I'm almost certain to, but I have to admit that I still do often have trouble separating the novelist from the novel, which isn't an opinion I'll defend in most cases.
Regarding a Wrinkle in Time: I remember near the beginning of the century there was a TV movie based on it. Even back then there was a censorious element at play. Since it was a mainstream, widely broadcast tv film, the producers felt the need to remove the references to "Jesus." They didn't remove any other religious references, just the references to Jesus. If I remember correctly, they generally watered down the Christian aspects as well.
I haven't seen any recent Narnia films (don't plan to), but I can't imagine they fair much better.
Speaking of Narnia, was it in this substack where there was a discussion of Turkish Delight, and I denounced it as weird, gross, and bad? Well, I stand corrected. A local Desi shop sells some imported from Turkey (with very few ingredients) and I have gorged myself shamelessly on that stuff to the point of gluttony. I must have been eating crap TD before that.
One of my fondest memories of parenting is reading the Little House on the Prairie series to my daughter. We both learned a lot about how much courage and hard work it took to homestead.
My parents read to me all the time, to the point where I couldn't wait to learn how to read for myself! That's how we raise a new generation of avid readers.
For context, I grew up in a majority-minority county populated largely by the descendants of slaves. My mother was quite literary and regularly read to us: one favorite was T. S. Eliot's *Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats* (1939). Another favorite was a book of Brer Rabbit animal fables collected by Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908). So you and your readers have to imagine this: a middle-class white woman (and gifted mimic) reading aloud to her children, in something of a caricature of African-American dialect, and during the Civil Rights Era, the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby in the brier patch. I strongly suspect that scene will make some of your readers uncomfortable, even if a case can be made that the original folktales on which Harris based his adaptations were patently subversive with respect to white supremacy and oppression.
Do the stories we read our children contain the seeds of their own critique? I wonder why that can't be the main criterion. Put differently, don't read your kids garbage, and rest easy that you're doing the right thing.
As with anything regarding children, discernment is required. Hence my wife’s concern about my introducing stories too heavy or dark for Naomi’s age. Hence my statement about interjecting myself into my narration of The Indian in the Cupboard to explain parts of the story—assumptions and behaviors of the characters as presented by the author—I found objectionable.
Something is only “garbage” if it’s inappropriate for the context or the purposes to which you bring it.
Brer Rabbit is an important cultural artifact. I worked for over a year in West Africa, in a region that historically was one of the areas that suffered from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. To help me learn the local language, Wolof, I read a collection of folktales in Wolof, and a recurring character in those tales was a trickster rabbit that strongly reminded me of Brer Rabbit.
Joel Chandler Harris is supremely underappreciated as a cultural transmitter and needs to be reassessed.
I once developed a first-year seminar on trickster figures (having done my dissertation on deceit in Roman literature, law, and society), so I see the validity of your comment even more readily than I otherwise might.
Parenting through reading. That's a beautiful thing.
It’s one of my favorite things each day.
You’re passing on a wonderful tradition she will never forget—but you know that. When I was a newspaper editor, I got to know all the kids in those towns. When I saw their parents, I never let the opportunity go by without telling them how great their kids were, and that it reflected well on their parenting. Witnessing behavior of good kids gives me faith in the next generation. Wish there was more of it. So, keep up the good work!
Lloyd Alexander, a great storyteller and world-builder, gives an additional issue. His characters live interesting adventures in worlds with no "god." Yet they live with purpose and values. Plus, Alexander grasps the "secret of the kingdom of God" better than some of my seminary profs did. So, if course, I read them aloud to my children and grandchildren.
All critics of these books are doing are projecting their personal, contemporary politics on the works of authors working before they were born (in many cases) writing in a completely different social and historical context that their thick heads don't know existed.
You don't need to equate the content of the stories with the personal politics of their authors- you read the stories to children or let them read them and let the story stand by itself. They want to know the people and lands in the stories, not the biographies of the authors. If anything, discussing the authors' backgrounds and beliefs should be done as a secondary supplement, if at all, and with the understanding that they were and are flawed and fallible human beings, not outright villains.
Does it matter to know that they owned slaves or hated Jews to appreciate their work? Absolutely not! Particularly if they are writing works that have virtually nothing to do with the "real" world.
It is supremely insulting to both the intelligence of the audience, regardless of what age they are, and the intentions of the authors to think that the promotion and acceptance of established or unwanted social norms is the object here. If anything, it is the opposite...
I want to hit “like” about 20 times on this. If a writer is not free to write and a parent is not free to read, we may as well pack it in and admit that our culture is artistically as well as morally bankrupt. The greatest moments of wonder, revelation, and laughter are contained in “problematic” books.
I believe if you take away “problematic” literature, you’re also getting rid of critical reasoning.
I agree with everything here, and it's one of the things that is so valuable about shared reading. When my daughter was small and we were reading the Little Prairie books (which had been read to me as a child), it opened up so much discussion, and a valuable lesson in perception. How many of our beliefs will be called into question by future generations? How do we know the history and progression of bigotry if we do not find it in primary sources? Reading those books in particular as an adult, I was appalled at Laura's mother's attitude to the Native Americans, but I also recognised Laura Ingalls Wilder's reporting of it: neither apologetic nor condoning, but presented in context.
Exactly. When I read those passages to Naomi from Little House, I explained the context, why a person might feel that way, and what I found wrong with it. People being people—including our faults—doesn’t spoil literature. It’s just part of living in the world.
There is a scene in 'Little House on the Prairie' where Laura asks her Pa why the Indians have to move away and Pa gives her the boilerplate Manifest Destiny reasoning, but Laura is not satisfied and persists in questioning until Pa finally tells her to be quiet and go to sleep. As a child, I related more to Laura's point of view than her Pa and Ma, so that scene and several others like it in the books raised in my developing mind moral questions about the pioneer movement of the 19th century, questions that prepared me to understand and acknowledge as an adult that European settlers had wronged the original inhabitants of North America.
What I loved about that example is how the supposedly problematic book itself undercuts the thing people are offended by.
My 8YO and I have just finished David Attenborough ‘A Life On Our Planet’ in a similar way to you (he’s a budding biologist) and now doing Matt Haig’s ‘Evie and the Animals’. Reading the Attenborough book with him makes it all the more urgent and meaningful.
Excellent! I love hearing that.
You hit the nail on the head; it's a story. Our "isms" get in the way of everything. We are free to read even the bleakest, darkest stories from Poe to Hawthorne to the wild adventures bequeathed to us by Tolkien, and whoever wrote Beowulf's poem. Why? Because He freed us. The true wisdom, Jesus Christ, said, "none shall snatch them out of My hand." What a fine promise to deliver to us, who, through God's mercy, find ways to talk to all our neighbors in story, because Christ is in every one of them.
True fact.
I love good enough parents because they self depreciate while doing their utmost best. I hear you. Welcome to the club. Child is lucky to be read to. My 13 year old teen still says - not often mind ( and I miss that, they grow up so quick) ‘mama put me to bed I’ve chosen the book’
Sorry to double up on my comments here, but this topic hits home. I think an author's belief system shouldn't stop you from reading their books; no writer, particularly pre-modern, is going to hold opinions that align with ours. Charles Dickens, despite being progressive for his time, was still a racist by today's standards, and had very little good to say about South Asians. You'll see some anti-semitism in the writers of the Brontës as well. And we all know what Dostoevsky thought about Jews. But I still read these without hesitation.
But I have to admit that there are some extreme cases that still bother me and make it hard for me to bridge the gap: Honestly, I can't bring myself to read HP Lovecraft (it doesn't help that I'm not a fan of his genre), but even so, his hatred went well beyond just being a product of his times. Knut Hamsun is going to be another challenge. I still haven't picked up Growth of the Soil despite owning it (twice; I got rid of it once because of the author, then decided that was rash). *But the man gave his Nobel Prize to Joseph Goebbels.* That's a tough journey for me to make, I have to admit.
There's also a novel I've long wanted to read, The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis. But I learned he owned quite a large number of slaves. I'll still probably read it, in fact I'm almost certain to, but I have to admit that I still do often have trouble separating the novelist from the novel, which isn't an opinion I'll defend in most cases.
Regarding a Wrinkle in Time: I remember near the beginning of the century there was a TV movie based on it. Even back then there was a censorious element at play. Since it was a mainstream, widely broadcast tv film, the producers felt the need to remove the references to "Jesus." They didn't remove any other religious references, just the references to Jesus. If I remember correctly, they generally watered down the Christian aspects as well.
I haven't seen any recent Narnia films (don't plan to), but I can't imagine they fair much better.
Speaking of Narnia, was it in this substack where there was a discussion of Turkish Delight, and I denounced it as weird, gross, and bad? Well, I stand corrected. A local Desi shop sells some imported from Turkey (with very few ingredients) and I have gorged myself shamelessly on that stuff to the point of gluttony. I must have been eating crap TD before that.
One of my fondest memories of parenting is reading the Little House on the Prairie series to my daughter. We both learned a lot about how much courage and hard work it took to homestead.
My parents read to me all the time, to the point where I couldn't wait to learn how to read for myself! That's how we raise a new generation of avid readers.