Not all children’s classics make for good reading

I was one of those children social scientists fret about: Each of my parents worked two jobs, so I was very rarely read to at bedtime.

It did happen occasionally, however, and I recall someone buying me my favorite book at the local grocery store when I begged at just the right time. It was a short version of Disney’s “The Rescuers.” To this day, I marvel at what a great character Evinrude the dragonfly was. To preserve my mind’s embodiment of the colorful critter, I’ve never watched the movie.

I know that many parents are getting fresh exposure to children’s literature due to the pandemic’s shutting down of schools and offices. But I didn’t give much thought to what I now consider “weirdo” kids’ books until I was a grown-up and exposed to beloved “classic children’s literature” as a co-teacher in English-speaking classrooms.

My veteran second-grade teaching partner would ask me to read something like “Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business” by Esphyr Slobodkina, or “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse” by Kevin Henkes, and I’d do so, enthusiastically. But I would also often feel weird as I turned the pages, like the author was gaslighting me, the adult who was doing the reading.

What are you trying to tell me, beloved children’s book? Are you doing some reverse psychology on me, and trying to get me to teach the kids something that I wouldn’t want them embroiled in?

Previously, as a young parent, I’d bought Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” because people always gushed about what a beautiful book it was. But when I finally read it, I recoiled. A totally self-centered boy takes and takes and takes from a lovely tree until it has been utterly depleted and reduced to a stump.

That said, I had favorites I fell in love with while reading to my young sons. This was often after I got home blearyeyed and exhausted at the end of a long day of being at work, making dinner and all the rest.

They’re books that I can imagine would get on your nerves if you were, oh, say, locked in the house with your kids 24/7 during a scary global pandemic.

Thanks to Twitter, I’ve learned that my all-time favorite kiddie book — the one I repurchased about three years ago and made my 15-year-old son let me read to him one last time — is really “a psychological thriller.” Yes, I’m talking about the problematic fave, “Go Dog, Go.”

This recent tweet came from Brooke Breit, a Chicago comedian: “unpopular opinion: the female dog asks the male dog’s opinion on her hats and he constantly puts her down, WHILE WEARING A SERIES OF BASIC ASS HATS HIMSELF, driving her to wear a bowl of garbage on her head to get his sick approval,” Breit wrote, driving me to literally laugh out loud.

As journalist and editor Whet Moser wrote recently:

“The Cat in the Hat sets up wildly unrealistic expectations for children about inviting someone charming and manipulative into your life. Read them ‘Paradise Lost’ or make them watch ‘The Sopranos’ instead.”

For what it’s worth, I even found a YouTube video that appears to be one of my all-time favorite actors, Christopher Walken, reading the intolerable but inexplicably adored “Where The Wild Things Are”.

There are so many excellent and hilarious takes on my other favorite — “Goodnight, Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown — that I can’t include them all. But perhaps you’ll identify with this one, from @ PowerTools—1:

“Goodnight moon. Goodnight Zoom. Will my stimulus check arrive soon?”