A mother should be able to read a book to her child without instilling poor morals and violence, don't you think? Than why is it that so many books are just brimming immorality and guns? Not that the two go together, I'm just saying I don't want either in a book I'm reading to my 4 year old.
I brought home an old classic. Babar. Sweet, intelligent, dapper elephant. But he wasn't always that way. First he had to watch a hunter murder his mother. Is this something I was expecting at the beginning of a Babar book? Clearly not. But there it was, a full page colored picture of a hunter in a token safari hat with a gun and a dead elephant mommy. Liam can't read but it was pretty obvious and hard to rush over. Of course, Babar's life isn't so bad. After the death of his mother, he goes into the city, buys a suit and gets adopted by a rich lady and he later becomes King (because he's dressed and therefore more civilized than his jungle peers).
Percillus the Pig is far from a well known classic but I also attempted to read this book to Liam one night at bedtime. I hardly expected that Percillus- who had snuck out at night to work as a nightwatchman to get rid of ugly bumps on his back (instead of resting up for school the next day) would get held up by an aptly named "Al Porcone" with a revolver (I only know it's a revolver because it said "revolver" in the book- the children's picture book). They held him captive, threatened to kill his sister. It's okay though because luckily those bumps on Percillus' back were wings and so he magically learned to fly and he rescued himself and his sister and found a way to implicate the bad guys in the crime.
My husband loves to read Mr. Wolf's Pancakes. This is one of those fractured fairy tales- much like The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. There's a kindly wolf who plays the mother hen roll of wanting to make pancakes. He needs help reading but no one will help him. He needs certain ingredients but no one will give them to him. Not only that, the villagers (a gingerbread, Chicken Little herself, Wee Willy Winkle, etc...) all are quite rude to him. In the end the pancakes are made, there is knocking at the door and all of the villagers are ready to come over and eat Mr. Wolf's pancakes. So he does what any other fairy tale wolf would do. He eats all of the villagers. Now I can see eating a gingerbread man but Goldilocks too? It's just wrong. Maybe Goldilocks isn't the most moral but does she really deserve to be eaten? And what does this say of the sin of gluttony (a stack of pancakes, 3 pigs, a chicken, Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood and a gingerbread for dessert)?
The violence and lack of morals don't end here. Countless books depict dead parents, horrific crimes, graphic guns and nasty teachers like Mrs. Gorp in Sideways Stories of a Wayside School (that's the other thing, I take that a little personally too). It doesn't stop at books. Ever stop to judge Timmy Turner's parents in "Fairly Oddparents"?
So maybe this is all just a great opportunity for parent and child to discuss morality and better choices. Maybe it's a good time to open up a discussion of dangerous fire arms. But at bedtime? For the time being, it may be best to simply not assume that a classic implies good characters and judgement. Because anyone who has read the original Grimm Brothers fairy tales may still be traumatized from the scene where one of Cinderella's wicked step sisters cuts off her big toe to fit into the glass slipper.
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