Let’s get one thing straight. I abhor the desecration of books. I banished a daughter from reading a book from my cartoon library — which I had kept pristine over countless readings for more than 25 years — for folding and ruining the cover. She sobbed. I held fast.
Maybe I get more worked up than I need to (“Don’t you ever, EVER step on a book!!!”) when I see my children mistreating their books (“Turn the pages from the OUTSIDE EDGE or you’ll rip them!”). I may have some deeper issues that need addressing (“GAAAHHH! Keep those wet fingers away from the page!”).
Even with the pulpiest of novels, I will comb the entire house for a suitable bookmark rather than dog-ear a page. I’m fine with a book looking fuzzy around the edges for being well read, but never, ever with one victimized by callous disregard.
I don’t know, but there is something simply sacred about a book. To me, each one is like a little Bible — wrapped in a flag.
So it is with no frivolity that I say…
There are some children’s books I am this/close to burning.
Not just books with the words, “Free Stickers Inside!” on the cover. Not just books with flaps or fold-out pages. (Seriously, there is no visual effect so clever that it warrants a fold-out in a children’s book. Because, no matter how stunning the image, it will be marred by tape after it is ripped by eager little fingers.) And not just books with doggerel rhyme.
But while we’re on the topic, please note: “elephant” does not rhyme with “tent.” First of all, to be a proper rhyme, the rhyme needs to begin with the stressed syllable, the “el” in “elephant.” But even if you allow for such sloppiness and forgive the way it makes the verse much harder to read aloud, “tent” still does not rhyme with the “phant” in “elephant.” The first has a short “e,” the second a schwa “e” sound.
It’s not simply a matter of fastidious art snobbery. Rhyme is used in kids’ books to help kids learn the sounds of the written word. If they can read “tent,” that helps them read bent, dent, lent, rent, and went. So if you can’t properly rhyme “elephant” in your silly little poem, then pick another animal. Or put the elephant in another part of the line. How hard is that?
But the book I draw this elephant-tent example from also happens to be an example of a worse crime against children. The crime that most makes me want to whip out the Zippo. Bad facts. This book says penguins can be found in the Arctic. What, are penguins suddenly bi-polar?
What kids hear in children’s books becomes etched in their brains. As adults, they will spout facts they learned in these books as if they were Gospel truths heard first-hand at the Sermon on the Mount. So, whatever you do in writing for kids, get your facts straight. Even to the smallest detail.
If you write about a sheep who dreams of becoming a “Country-and-Western singer,” know that the “and Western” was passé when the Blues Brothers joked about it back in the 1970’s. It’s just “Country” now. The outdated reference only betrays a clueless chauvinism trying to pass as elitist hip.
Last night we read a book that commits a similar cultural faux pas. It’s about a group of sisters who are decidedly Chinese. The illustrations emulate traditional Chinese art. Their home has Chinese architecture. They live in China. One of the sisters is an expert in “karate.”
What??? Karate? That’s not Chinese. That’s Japanese. With one word, the author has just offended nearly 20% of the world’s population. Plus one über-nerdy dad.
(Sigh.) Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m wound too tight. Maybe I just woke up cranky today. If so, then I apologize.
Or am I not alone? I’d love you to give me a reality check.
If I need to have a beer and mellow out, please tell me so. I won’t mind. Especially about the beer part.
But if any of you are similarly offended by crimes against young readers, please shout ‘em out. Anything from typos to inappropriate themes to glaring idiocy.
Whatever the upshot, beer or company, it is sure to make me feel just a little less crazy. Thank you.
You are not crazy, nor are you wound too tight. And you certainly are not wrong! To show my true colours right now, Emily Dickinson said that words have power, and nothing has changed in the 100+ years since then. A casual reading of the news lets anyone know that. Not being a parent, I cannot share a specific example from a children’s book. But, as a former high school English teacher, I can say that children who come from homes where words are valued grow into thoughtful, thinking teenagers who are a joy to teach. Children who never see their parents read do not.
Thank you for preparing your daughters for the rest of their lives!! They will thank you later, if not now. (And, please feel free to have a beer – you’ve earned it!)
I was taught to do as my teachers instructed. (“Psshht! Gluk gluk gluk gluk. Ahhhh.”)
I, too, suffer from the zeal of a fundamentalist when it comes to books. To me, books ARE sacred and must be handled with reverence. I have hundreds of books in my apartment, going back to my high school days, and I treasure them all. I wouldn’t even highlight my textbooks at Notre Dame. Nor will I highlight my grad school textbooks. If you want to make a notation about a book, put it in a notebook and keep the notebook alongside the book. The only time I write inside a book is when I give it to a loved one as a gift, and I write a little notation on the inside flap.
That being said, most textbooks (high school, college or graduate school) have the consistency of verbal oatmeal. They get the job done, but they’re bland and tasteless. They are written by committee, so there is no discernable narrative voice. And somewhere along the way, “scholarly” became code-speak for “dull and lifeless.” It is shameful to see the English language butchered like a pig in the name of “scholarship” or “research”. My freshman year English comp teacher once told me, “If an author uses more than two abstract nouns in a sentence, he is bull—-ing you. Keep. It. Real!” If only more authors would think like that.
The one we’re struggling with right now is the boy coming home with incorrect information from the teacher. Sometimes it’s just incomplete (“you have to be a citizen to live in this country!”) sometimes it’s just wrong (“the only thing left from 9/11 was a huge cross in the rubble!”), and I know that I’m not hearing half of what they discuss. So, how do we build an 8 year old that has a healthy skepticism without undermining his teacher’s authority and, you know, making sure the information he gets is accurate?
I’m also one of those people who get infuriated with books that have crappy rhyming or wrong/misleading information.
Exactly! Once you start undermining their trust in books, it’s nothing but bad. But you don’t want them to be gullible or misinformed either.
I understand how authors are human and make mistakes. But a children’s book typically has no more words than this blog post. And it takes more than a year to get to print. Surely there’s time for a fact check.
Incorrect information drives me crazy (polar bears and penguins will never cross paths outside of a zoo), but what I really hate is misused meter. I can stomach the occasional bad rhyme if it serves the story or a good punch line, but if I have to read a sentence more than once to figure out where the emphasis should be, that book is dead to me. The real art of rhyming and/or blank verse is finding the words whose natural emphasis creates a pleasing, easy to follow rhythm. If an author can’t manage that, she or he should stick to prose.
Or another form
Of elegant poetry
I suggest Haiku.
When I discovered a book called “What is a Princess?” in my three-year old daughter’s room, I had a sinking feeling. Luckily, the emphasis was on being kind and helpful and honest and just, and only a little bit on dressing nicely. Surprisingly, there was noting about being beautiful.
Bad rhyming and clumsy meter bug me too. But just in children’s books. I’m a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and sometimes they cheat rhymes but with hilarious results. Once you’re an adult, it’s acceptable on a case by case basis.
I agree on both counts. A very sweet book (with two girls, of course we have that one). And a wrong rhyme can be right for an occasion, even in children’s verse. The first that comes to mind is the Ogden Nash punchline, “Better yet, if called by a panther./ Don’t anther.”
Dr. Seuss, on the other hand, is invariably precise in his rhyme, and so meticulous with his meter that it is extremely rare for a line of his to cause a stumble. And that’s with predominantly anapestic meter, which is more challenging than most dare to attempt.
The latest flap of this nature in our house was reading a pull the tab book (yes, heresy for toddlers, but they *love* tearing things!) that was meant to identify animals by their silhouettes. We were identifying together, and the book clear calls a tortoise a turtle and an alligator a crocodile! That one went right back in the library bag.
I also have a pet peeve about books that picture stars in the cut-out of a crescent moon… there are no stars between the earth and moon, people!
http://smurk.me/5lrj
I think that many authors think of children’s books as a way to sell thinking that because they are children, they will not know that the contents are lame, do not rhyme correctly, make no sense, and have no real story. I HATE when I get into one of those books with my preschoolers. We are in the middle of the book already, when I realize this really is the pits of a story. And there they are, the little ones, listening and looking wide-eyed at the pages, which truly make no sense. Sometimes I take advantage of the fact that they cannot read, yet, and I either make up the pages….author that I am NOT…or simply tell them that this is a badly written story and let’s find one more interesting for all of us.
So annoying!
one of my daughter’s otherwise unobjectionable toddler books, Just Like You, has the glaring error of stars shining through the dark part of the crescent moon. as far as i know, the moon is always round, regardless of how much is currently light or dark…
drives me crazy every time.
Don’t feel bad! My husband is a voracious reader of all sorts of books and has very similar values. Just today we had a freakout because my son (2 1/2) got ahold of one of his prized collection of religious texts and…yep…you guessed it…ripped a page right out. Apartment living = putting the valuable frightfully close to the toddler or deal with the insult of having it chronically packed away. Sigh.
As an aspiring writer I do believe that some children’s books are bad enough to warrant the Hefty coffin, but I’m not like my husband. I certainly can’t read some of them without rolling my eyes — but luckily my active little boy doesn’t care much for sitting down and reading yet. I dread when he starts preferring things I think are stupid…