If there is one situation where television failed to raise me properly, it’s in the portrayal of Parent Reading Child a Bedtime Story. Never once was I told how much, as a parent, I would come to HATE certain books.
By the 1,473rd time you read “Goodnight Moon,” you must still produce the same enthusiasm, inflection, voices, and, occasionally, sound effects as you did on your very first reading. Anything less is the start of a guilt spiral in which you have failed at parenting, and you imagine your child, years later, emotionally crippled and living in an abandoned sewage runoff.
Even good books wear thin. When I was little, I loved this one:
But by the time I read it to my youngest sister, I couldn't resist making a few mental edits:
Fortunately, she greatly enjoyed my re-telling, and I take full credit for the evolution of her sense of humour as a result. You're welcome, Hayley.
Now that I have my own kid, I try to select books that won't inspire me to torch major publishing houses. Occasionally, however, we wind up with one like this:
This is an awful book. AWFUL. And we read it a LOT.
“Oh, pickle juice...” really? Come on, Disney. That's insulting, even to my toddler’s grasp of curses. He's already mastered "oh, crap" - aim higher!
Much better. These edits appear in your mind, of course, but once you start, they keep going...
And thus you have a whole new collection of children's literature to enjoy every night, over and over... and over... and over...
Do you have any "mental edits" of favourite or despised kids' books?
