Three Kids Books That Help Me Be an Adult
Excluding the heavy-handed Berenstain Bears
Who’s this book for, anyway?
One of my proudest accomplishments is being born between Generation X and Millennials. The micro-generation that inherited some of the aloof bad-assery of The Lost Generation (just a defense mechanism from parental neglect, wrapped in a black sweater) and all the bad economic luck of Millennials.
It’s like being generationally non-binary or poly. So hot right now! (But also: please stop.)
One Gen-X feature I identify with readily and vehemently is the latchkey kid sensibility: the raised-by-wolves autonomy we got from having a bike, a Burger King, and cable TV as tools for survival while our divorced parents were at work or singles bars looking for our new stepparents.
Not to act all tough, but this is what sets us apart from Millennials, who call way too many things “awkward” when they just have no idea. Try being a third-wheel on one of your dad’s first dates at Sizzler and running into his second ex-wife. Then we can talk!
The caregiving style of our parents (Boomers) can be summed up by the two biggest public service announcements of that time:
“Do you know where your children are?”
And “I learned it by watching you!”
Yes, our parents had to be reminded they were responsible for their children who could be wandering the streets alone at night, and also encouraged not to shoot, smoke, or snort drugs in front of them (I never could figure out which format of drugs was in that iconic box.)
My parenting approach now careens in the other direction. I accompany my daughter to the bathroom while she poops and reciprocate the intense eye contact she requires to feel supported. My son acts like I’ve abandoned him emotionally if I ask him to put on his shoes by himself. (They are 27 and 32, is that weird? jk, jk)
My husband and I also read to them every night (one of maybe 2 things I can be smug about as a parent — let me have this), and over five years of reading and re-reading every possible genre, style, and topic of children’s books, I realized some moral lessons/calls to virtue these books are meant to inspire in kids were totally foreign to me. I guess that happens when you learn about being a good citizen through Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer!
So here’s a short list of random kids books that make me question my own little way of life, but aren’t super-obvious and eye-rolly in their moralizing. In fact, they’re kind of subtle and elegant in their message (from my once feral child POV), and kind of fun to read the first 30 times or so.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t get this one at first. If you’re not familiar, it’s about a family of five going on the titular bear hunt, and all the mayhem they’re not prepared for: tall grass, violent wind, dark woods, a field of mud, a raging river…just so they can harass a bear? They don’t even bring a gun. (One kid brings a stick.)
It’s lyrical and has fun onomatopoeias like “squishy squashy,” but every time the characters convince themselves they’re not scared and decide to push through the next obstacle, they refrain: “Oh no, we’ve got to go through it!”
Which is maddening because no, you don’t. You can stay home and watch Jerry Springer.
Before you think this is an allegory for migrants passing the Darién Gap to seek a better life, I’ll tell you it’s centered on a white family in 1989 with a cozy home on the English countryside. I know this because once they reach the bear cave, they get scared and run back to their quaint cottage and hide under the covers of a fluffy bed. My husband’s interpretation was that it was a mutual hallucination, they never left home and the bear hunt didn’t really happen. My interpretation was that it’s stupid.
Then I was texting with a friend about fun stuff like the decline of society, the evangelical embrace of Trump, how everyone is splintered into their own algorithmic reality, how things seem worse than ever, and how baffled we are to be entering a new election year. She said, “We (Americans) are really going through it, aren’t we?”
Ding. Oh no, we’ve got to go through it!
This year already feels as absurd as going on a bear hunt for no good reason (are there even bears in rural England?), insufficiently armed with a stick and casual clothes. And while I think about it in the macro (election year, democracy at stake, the possible end of The Great American Experiment), I also hear the refrain in my head for smaller things (showers, taxes, the three hours between school pickup and bedtime), Oh no! I’ve got to go through it!
I love the “Oh no” part the best. It’s like permission to feel dread but still charging ahead and getting it done anyway. Oh no, my first colonoscopy!
Unlike Bear Hunt, Pumpkin Time is not a known classic. Based on my cursory Google search, it doesn’t seem to have won any awards and it doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page with sections devoted to its mobile app and “Cultural Impact.” But I find it profound!
The story follows Evy, a young girl who seems to be maintaining an entire goddamned farm on her own without adult help or supervision (total Gen X kid) and is highly in-distractible.
Everyone around her (100% farm animals) gets swept away by whatever novelty is happening that day: cows wearing fancy hats, pigs playing badminton, etc., Evy can’t be bothered. She’s immersed in a garden project that she’s too busy to even talk about. She’s reading the almanac and hauling shit around in her wheelbarrow while her donkey friends are on flying boat trips. This goes on for a year — Evy’s year of intense dedication and focus.
At the end of the story, it’s late November and everyone realizes Evy has been quietly growing a gigantic fucking pumpkin so she can feed these animals a huge pie. Everyone feasts on the literal fruits of Evy’s labor.
Evy is holding up the sky for you people while you dance around a maypole and you know what? She deserves more but there is no indication she will get it.
Anyway, I like to think of Evy’s meditative focus when I need to lock in on something important, and the screaming headlines on my phone and social media outrage machines become silly distractions to ignore, like flying donkeys and dancing pigs. Thanks, Evy!
There’s so much going on here! On the surface it seems like a straightforward story about wastefulness and repurposing: Joseph has an overcoat, it’s old and worn, so he gives it multiple new lives as a jacket, vest, scarf, necktie, handkerchief, and button.
But there are little windows into Joseph’s personal life that suggest he’s all alone. He wears the vest to “dance at his nephew’s wedding” and the necktie to “visit his married sister in the city.” During the handkerchief era, we see Joseph sick in bed at home with no one taking care of him. The only picture on his walls is his presumably long-dead father.
At the end, when he loses his button, only his dog and cat are there to help him look for it and they are no help at all.
And then? “He had nothing.”
But wait! He decides to write a book about his overcoat, and here we are, “making something out of nothing.”
What’s also heartening is all the other stuff Joseph does: he goes to the fair in his jacket, sings in the men’s choir with his scarf. He is alone, but not socially isolated. He shows up and puts in the work of being a good human, upstanding neighbor, and loving uncle. He is materially frugal and socially magnanimous. In our late capitalist consumer culture that wants us to stay home on our phones buying things, Joseph is the embodiment of resistance.
If I’m influencing here, I’ll end this by recommending some other books that are cool for preschool/kindergarten-age kids but won’t anesthetize your brain while you read them:
Anything by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler is top tier shit. Dark British humor for kids.
Oliver Jeffers books, especially There’s a Ghost in This House.
Anything by the Fan Brothers. Ocean Meets Sky, The Barnabus Project, The Night Gardener, and It Fell From the Sky are all great. Recommended if you like Tim Burton and The Golden Compass.
this re-ignites my fantasy to write a blog (a hem, substack whatever) where my husband and I review the same movies our kids make us watch over and over and over. "Frozen 2, 48th time: today I noticed what a jerk the second rock troll is being during the second. Am i the only one seeing this?!" etc etc etc.
We just watched Honey I Shrunk the Kids and I had forgotten that the whole movie wouldn’t work if they had cellphones or responsible parents.
Both sets of parents were just like “those darn kids have been missing for 6 hours!! How dare they mess up our fishing trip!”
And that was a Disney movie!!
We’re doing great.