Family Daze
You can't always judge a book by its cute cover
By Debbie Farmer
Is it me, or have you noticed that sometimes children's books are not what you expected? Take, for example, the part in Little Red Riding Hood where the wolf gobbles up the grandmother and the woodsman frees her by carving up the wolf's stomach with an ax. I mean, try explaining THAT to a 5-year-old who still worries about where his potty goes after he flushes the toilet.
In fact, just the other day I bought my son a picture book with a cute picture of a fluffy bunny on the cover. Now, I didn't read it first, since I spent four years in college analyzing English literature, and I figured, and this may come as a shock, that it was probably a story about "a cute, little fluffy bunny."
And it was. Sort of. After all, it started out with bunny frolicking in a sunny meadow with his mommy. But, by the time I got to page seven my son was crying so hard he could barely see the pictures. How was I supposed to know that the bunny would get lost in the forest, fall into a raging river with a strong undertow, and be swept away, only to be saved in the nick of time by a helpful beaver? Call me weird, but I consider this false advertising.
After all, when I buy a paperback book with Fabio on the cover I automatically know that it will be a tawdry romance with lots of racy scenes and not, say, a philosophical essay on raising the political consciousness of modern humanity. So you would think that, if you saw a children's book with a fluffy bunny on the cover, it would have a happy, fluffy bunny-type of story inside and not a depressing diatribe about working through scary situations and facing the world on your own and all that. You would think.
That reminds me about the time I bought a book based on a popular cartoon character that was really, I suspect, a textbook for family life education. I should've sensed something wrong on page one, when it started out with a group of kids setting a swarm of animated insects free to find mates so they could lay their eggs.
"What's a mate?" my then-6-year-old daughter asked.
"It's sort of like a really good friend." I quickly picked up the book and continued to read.
"We have to make sure they cross the sea so they can have babies," the next page said.
"What has flying over the sea got to do with having babies?" My daughter narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
Now, I've always prided myself on being open and honest with my children, and I knew that what I said could affect her whole perception of the reproductive process for years to come, so I struggled for an appropriate, biologically correct answer.
"Well," I said, "sometimes the stork might be busy so then you have to fly over the water to his nest and pick up the baby yourself."
"You have to fly there?" she asked incredulously.
"Yes." There was a long silence.
"How do people know how to get there?"
"They take a special plane."
She considered this for a moment.
"I don't think that's such a good system," she said finally.
Maybe it's me, but I'm beginning to think that children's books need some sort of warning for busy, tired parents. Nothing complicated, just a line or two so we don't naively pick up a picture book about a lost baby chipmunk as a light bedtime story, and end up explaining to a sobbing 4-year-old that, although it was too bad Fuzzy was torn to bits by a pack of rabid hyenas, it's really all for the best since he's now in a nice place called heaven. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
However, from now on I vow to no longer trust any cover, no matter how innocent it looks. And if you don't believe me, just yesterday my son brought home a new book with a cheery little monkey and a fire engine on the cover. I quickly snatched it out of his hands and hid it on top of the refrigerator.
"Hey, what are you doing?" my husband said. "That's a classic book from my childhood."
Now, you may think I'm overreacting. But believe me, I'm not fooled one bit.
Debbie Farmer is the author of 'Life in the Fast-Food Lane: Surviving the Chaos of Parenting'. Visit her website at: www.familydaze.com. Questions or comments? Email her at paradigm-tsa@familydaze.com.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
