Once upon a time

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

Now that I’m reading to my grandson, I’m mindful of what books I heard and read as a child -- and wondering how they affected me and whether I’d feel the same way about them now.

Here’s an example. In Aesop’s (and La Fontaine’s) fable, The Ants and the Grasshopper, the grasshopper sang all summer while the ants were gathering food, and in the winter, when the cold, hungry grasshopper asked the ants for food, they told him to dance to keep warm. Essentially, they slammed the door in his face.

As a child I knew we were supposed to appreciate the moral lesson of the virtues of hard work and the dangers of not planning for the future. But I thought the ants were rude, arrogant, selfish, and either totally without appreciation for the arts or envious of the grasshopper’s joie de vivre (though I didn’t know it was called that). That’s pretty much how I still feel.

I never cared for fairy tales as a child, not because they were gruesome -- and some certainly were -- but because they just didn’t hold my interest. (Maybe that’s why I can’t seem to write fiction.) I read the Greek myths instead, which had equally scary or alarming features -- but those were never the important part of the story. As a child reader, I used my judgment and discretion in what I took away from fables or myths, poems or stories. And I think the freedom to do that is critical to the developing brain.

For some years now, so many of the popular stories (or the videos that replace stories) geared to children have been devoid of most anything unpleasant, or subtle, or artistic, or truly funny. How you ever watched Barney, the purple “dinosaur” with capped teeth? One could, I think, get diabetes from it -- except it’s all saccharine instead of real sugar.

Why do the current makers of children’s entertainment, so much of which is branded “EDUCATIONAL,” assume that children are dim, with banal interests and no appreciation of quality? Watching these shows may well fulfill that prophecy of banality and dimness, as will having every thought predigested for them and served on a bed of “feel good” cliche. 

Kids understand; they get ideas, humor, contradictions. They are smart -- not in the annoying, smart-alecky way of sitcom kids, but with the essential smarts of figuring out the world. Stories should help them wonder, and trace cause-and-effect, and doubt, and find proof that satisfies them.  Of course we need to keep our children safe, but isn't part of that helping them stretch and expand their understanding of life? We wouldn't feed their bodies only pablum; why are we doing so with their minds?

And really, clever Brer Rabbit is so much more interesting than smarmy Elmo, don't you think?