Children’s books have always been fun for me with their cute characters, colorful pictures, and playful language.  I loved them when I was little, I loved them as I grew older and began working with children, and I’m getting to enjoy them all over again now that I have my own little one at home.

Only now things are different.  Now my perception is jaded by 34+ years of life with the harshnesses the real world can show.  I mean, I’m fairly Pollyanna-ish in my optimism and I choose to remain blissfully naive about some things for my own sanity. Now when I read a children’s book, I come to it with all of this knowledge that I didn’t have when I was a child reading the same books.  

One of my favorite books when I was little was The Poky Little Puppy.  Oh, how I loved the poky little puppy!  He and the other little puppies would escape under the fence, then the little puppies would go “roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble, till they came to the green grass” where the poky little puppy always found something to check out.

Whatever his findings, the puppies would realize that a delicious dessert awaited them at home so they’d rush back only to be scolded by their mother and sent to bed without dessert.  Later the poky little puppy would return home, eat all of the dessert himself, and drift off to sleep with a full belly.

Let’s pause here and recap.  If you’re bad, you don’t get dessert, but if you’re bad and late, you get everyone else’s dessert.  In the end the poky little puppy also misses dessert but by then he’s already had more than his fair share anyway.  

Then I pulled out one of the books my mom sent for the baby.  Cuddly Monkeyis a super cute cardboard book adorned with a fuzzy monkey belly you can pet on the front cover.  In a short four pages we learn that monkey plays pranks on his friends, so one day they decide they will play a prank on him.  When he swings on the vines, they pull his vine.  Everyone laughs.  The end.  

Again, let’s recap.  Pranks are funny.  Revenge is okay.  

Even my husband remarked, “what the hell?” after he read it.  

Then there was my grandmother’s favorite book about a little black kitten with white feet who wanted to be all black like the other kittens.  He went around to other animals asking if they knew how he could get black feet and ended up dousing them in ink or paint or something and trotted off happily.  

Okay, so it’s an old book.  Times were different then.  Conformity was expected. Still, it seems a rough message to say that you too can be just like everyone else if you are savvy enough to disguise yourself.

I’m probably being too critical.  Perhaps a child’s brain development allows them to see these stories differently than we do as adults.  

Either way, I’ve set Cuddly Monkey aside in favor of Cuddly Duck who learns all about his senses.  I don’t have the book about the kitten.  The Poky Little Puppy, however, is still one of my favorites and will be staying in the rotation.

Have you been troubled by any children’s books?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments.