Tough Issues
"Don't shy away from tough issues" by Jabari Asim, in The New York Times.
I read the above article and was struck by its simplicity. Just basic observations and instincts from a parent, grandparent and teacher. It's lovely that someone is willing to be totally honest with their children. Some of the comments left me sighing in my chair but others were refreshingly different.
A user called Bob Kanegis put up a lovely comment that just shows you how much some youngsters can process. Others said...
"Children's books have always been about injustices in the world."
"The time to help children learn to be compassionate and understanding and aware is when they are young - and great picture books that promote diversity and that provide, an albeit, hopeful perspective of the world are much needed."
"None of the books I read as a child were politically correct. As a young child I didn't care. I wanted to read. I wanted to get lost in another world. I wanted to hear, in my head as I read, voices that were not those of my everyday life."
"A book that features same sex parents is not, by its very nature, propaganda - for many it is realism."
That last comment stuck out, and there is no come back for it, she is right. Authors often write about what they know, and not all of them can go outside of their own experiences for their writing. So we shouldn't be chastising authors and publisher for not producing the diversity children need... we should be chastising ourselves for not encouraging more budding writers around the world.
Throughout history we have filled in the gaps ourselves and taken folk tales and tweaked them to be more relevant to our individual cultures... but why not now? Why are we not taking children's books that have great storylines and adapting them when we retell them in our homes?
There's no denying that children are smarter than we think they are... there is probably already a plot afoot to over throw us. They don't see black and white, they don't see gay or straight... they see people. At some point you have to wonder if we should stop trying to mould them into the people we want them to be and take a leaf out of their book and just take what the world throws at us.
I read the above article and was struck by its simplicity. Just basic observations and instincts from a parent, grandparent and teacher. It's lovely that someone is willing to be totally honest with their children. Some of the comments left me sighing in my chair but others were refreshingly different.
A user called Bob Kanegis put up a lovely comment that just shows you how much some youngsters can process. Others said...
"Children's books have always been about injustices in the world."
"The time to help children learn to be compassionate and understanding and aware is when they are young - and great picture books that promote diversity and that provide, an albeit, hopeful perspective of the world are much needed."
"None of the books I read as a child were politically correct. As a young child I didn't care. I wanted to read. I wanted to get lost in another world. I wanted to hear, in my head as I read, voices that were not those of my everyday life."
"A book that features same sex parents is not, by its very nature, propaganda - for many it is realism."
That last comment stuck out, and there is no come back for it, she is right. Authors often write about what they know, and not all of them can go outside of their own experiences for their writing. So we shouldn't be chastising authors and publisher for not producing the diversity children need... we should be chastising ourselves for not encouraging more budding writers around the world.
Throughout history we have filled in the gaps ourselves and taken folk tales and tweaked them to be more relevant to our individual cultures... but why not now? Why are we not taking children's books that have great storylines and adapting them when we retell them in our homes?
There's no denying that children are smarter than we think they are... there is probably already a plot afoot to over throw us. They don't see black and white, they don't see gay or straight... they see people. At some point you have to wonder if we should stop trying to mould them into the people we want them to be and take a leaf out of their book and just take what the world throws at us.
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