My baby is almost 3 months old so I've been looking at a lot of baby books lately. I've also noticed this creepy trend where older books are written for kids and newer ones are written for parents.
I feel like almost everything is FOR parents these days. Childhood seems to be ABOUT the parents now. I have a unique situation of having had children across a 22-year span and the landscape is vastly different now than it was when my oldest children were born.
Also, there are a lot of kids’ books without plots. Lots of books about how loved the child is, which…. I mean cool but I’m pretty sure most children enjoy stories. When I worked at daycare, the 2 year olds were always mesmerized by Kitten’s First Full Moon; they empathized with kitten and were so invested in her adventure!
Go to the thrift store and get yourself some 90s board and Little Golden books. My littlest kids are particularly fond of the books with real pictures in them.
I have Llama Llama Red Pajama and I have wanted to toss it since I got it. The only reason it’s stayed on my shelf is because it has a note from a family member inside (though to be fair, we don’t talk to them, so I really should throw it out).
But it has always rubbed me the wrong way. Like, I don’t need to read a story about a llama throwing a temper tantrum to my toddler—that’s gonna be the thing she takes away from it. Also, “what if mama llama’s GONE?”; skip that page every time. I don’t need to introduce any fears to my child.
Honestly I don’t understand how you can write a children’s book like this. It’s showcasing bad behavior, a distracted, overwhelmed mother, and fear. #makekidsbookswholesomeagain
Exactly - I don't want to give my kid ideas of things to worry about or bad behaviors to try.
We read Llama Llama hide and seek a lot when my daughter was a baby - but it's a lift-a-flap book that only involves Llama looking around his room for a misplaced toy. The other books in the series (and the frankly miserable TV show) always struck me as whiny and annoying.
Thanks for articulating what I sort of subconsciously felt about these books. It’s relatively mild in the first one, but we kind of thought that was enough.
Definitely the lack of any reference to Dad in some books sticks out after a while, especially to this dad. The book “Are you my mother?” is cute, but I still have trouble resisting reading it as “Oh dear!’ the mother bird said. ‘My baby is almost here. He will want to eat!’ So she called to the father bird ‘He’s almost here, we need something to eat!’”
If you are looking for a sweet, calming bedtime book Going to Sleep on the Farm is beautifully illustrated and has a calming cadence. I found it when my kids were a little too old for it but we still loved it and they liked looking at the pictures on their own.
I love to read Llama Llama Red Pajama to my little ones—I’m very animated, making us all laugh, and I also emphasize the “please stop all this llama drama and be *patient* for your mama”—but I have never read the other books listed here.
These look so sad and stressful. I don’t think I could read these in the same animated delight as the pajama book.
I have an extreme sentimental affinity for this series because Dewdney's sister was one of my college mentors. However, I don't actually like a lot of the specific books, never thought hard about it but I kind of see your point here. We have the original and the one about the babysitter (might not actually be by Dewdney–it happened to be sent to us by Dolly Parton's imagination library right around the time we had a non-family babysitter for the first time so my son really likes it). If I recall correctly Dewdney was a broke single mom when she started writing them so I think struggles particular to that state in life do come through.
I have enjoyed the few episodes of the TV show I have seen which seem to encourage humility and collaboration in the face of typical issues elementary age kids face, but we don't have Netflix so it's not a regular thing for us.
I had been going to add that she did find a happy romantic partner later in life and perhaps, had she not died at such an untimely age, might have explored other family models in her books BUT it appears (based on lawsuits from her daughters) that her boyfriend/partner/trustee may have manipulated her into changing her will while she was terminally ill among other things which is...just really sad.
It's always interesting to me to read about an author's personal life. It's funny how sometimes it connects with the literature and other times it doesn't. I have nothing against Dewdney personally. Her untimely death is certainly very sad.
I read my daughter Llama Llama Red Pajama because I thought it would be a cute rhyming story. It's about little Llama having trouble falling asleep. He calls down to her and Mama Llama says she'll be right up to check on him, but gets distracted by a phone call. Meanwhile, little Llama completely freaks out and has a meltdown waiting for Mama. She eventually gets back upstairs and all is well.
Before we got to the resolution, my daughter became just as upset as little Llama and started genuinely crying along with him. She did not like the book and wasn't interested in reading it again.
(For what it's worth, we also couldn't read Babar because she cried at the beginning when the mother died and refused to hear the rest of the story.)
We found that Is Your Mama A Llama is a much better option for a cute rhyming story about mamas and llamas.
Now that I think about it, my son felt the same way.
There was another kids book that didn’t have any negative message but did show a kid acting out (much more mildly than the llama) called “I’m not sleepy!” Even at age two he wasn’t a fan of those pictures even if he couldn’t say why.
There's something very unsettling (and at bedtime no less !) about these children's books that seem to glamorize the bratty child. Not something we want to introduce into their imaginations through picture books.
At bedtime I read my 2 year old "the house in the night" and she LOVES it. The art is so rich, and the pacing is so peaceful. It shows, not tells, the quiet joy of a nuclear family settling in for the night. It couldn't be more different than the Red Pajama book being described.
Interesting read! We have one Llama Llama book (Llama Llama Nighty Night) and my toddlers are absolutely obsessed with it from a very early age…it walks through a bedtime routine very similar to ours, and they definitely see the parallels. I’ve read it uncountable times and genuinely see nothing concerning in it (no dad involved true, but my husband is usually doing dishes and tidying up while we do bedtime routines anyway…and many many many children’s books don’t include a visible father for bedtime, etc., so that never jumped out at me).
However…I have only encountered the Red Pajama one prior to having kids but have no interest in introducing bedtime tantrums before they’re self-invented haha.
Interesting. We all liked Llama Llama Red Pajama, but yes, Baby did ask where the daddy llama was. The children's book that disgusted me the most was Elephants Do Not Belong in Trees. It's like the evil twin of the Saggy Baggy Elephant.
This is one of those pieces where every sentence is its own mic drop. Absolutely spot-on!
Haha, thank you!!
I second this. 🏆
My baby is almost 3 months old so I've been looking at a lot of baby books lately. I've also noticed this creepy trend where older books are written for kids and newer ones are written for parents.
I feel like almost everything is FOR parents these days. Childhood seems to be ABOUT the parents now. I have a unique situation of having had children across a 22-year span and the landscape is vastly different now than it was when my oldest children were born.
Also, there are a lot of kids’ books without plots. Lots of books about how loved the child is, which…. I mean cool but I’m pretty sure most children enjoy stories. When I worked at daycare, the 2 year olds were always mesmerized by Kitten’s First Full Moon; they empathized with kitten and were so invested in her adventure!
Go to the thrift store and get yourself some 90s board and Little Golden books. My littlest kids are particularly fond of the books with real pictures in them.
"The books begin to look like the heavy-handed attempts of an adult to normalize things that shouldn’t be normalized."
This sentence pretty much sums up the general trend of the entire Western World for the last 25 years.
Exactly!
I have Llama Llama Red Pajama and I have wanted to toss it since I got it. The only reason it’s stayed on my shelf is because it has a note from a family member inside (though to be fair, we don’t talk to them, so I really should throw it out).
But it has always rubbed me the wrong way. Like, I don’t need to read a story about a llama throwing a temper tantrum to my toddler—that’s gonna be the thing she takes away from it. Also, “what if mama llama’s GONE?”; skip that page every time. I don’t need to introduce any fears to my child.
Honestly I don’t understand how you can write a children’s book like this. It’s showcasing bad behavior, a distracted, overwhelmed mother, and fear. #makekidsbookswholesomeagain
Toss it!
Exactly - I don't want to give my kid ideas of things to worry about or bad behaviors to try.
We read Llama Llama hide and seek a lot when my daughter was a baby - but it's a lift-a-flap book that only involves Llama looking around his room for a misplaced toy. The other books in the series (and the frankly miserable TV show) always struck me as whiny and annoying.
Thanks for articulating what I sort of subconsciously felt about these books. It’s relatively mild in the first one, but we kind of thought that was enough.
Definitely the lack of any reference to Dad in some books sticks out after a while, especially to this dad. The book “Are you my mother?” is cute, but I still have trouble resisting reading it as “Oh dear!’ the mother bird said. ‘My baby is almost here. He will want to eat!’ So she called to the father bird ‘He’s almost here, we need something to eat!’”
Think how much trouble that would have saved!
Ha! I should start to read Are You my Mother to the kids with that opening and then just shut the book!
But then you lose the classic and oft-quoted line; “You are not my mother. You are a snort!”
One of my friends gave us Where's My Cow?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where's_My_Cow%3F
Which, as long as you don't mind a kid potentially shouting "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp" in any situation, is perfect in every way.
I have never been able to stand these books and you perfectly articulated why
Superb article. It's infuriating how feminism has been injected into every area of our lives!
If you are looking for a sweet, calming bedtime book Going to Sleep on the Farm is beautifully illustrated and has a calming cadence. I found it when my kids were a little too old for it but we still loved it and they liked looking at the pictures on their own.
Thank you. I LOVE recommendations!
I love to read Llama Llama Red Pajama to my little ones—I’m very animated, making us all laugh, and I also emphasize the “please stop all this llama drama and be *patient* for your mama”—but I have never read the other books listed here.
These look so sad and stressful. I don’t think I could read these in the same animated delight as the pajama book.
I have an extreme sentimental affinity for this series because Dewdney's sister was one of my college mentors. However, I don't actually like a lot of the specific books, never thought hard about it but I kind of see your point here. We have the original and the one about the babysitter (might not actually be by Dewdney–it happened to be sent to us by Dolly Parton's imagination library right around the time we had a non-family babysitter for the first time so my son really likes it). If I recall correctly Dewdney was a broke single mom when she started writing them so I think struggles particular to that state in life do come through.
I have enjoyed the few episodes of the TV show I have seen which seem to encourage humility and collaboration in the face of typical issues elementary age kids face, but we don't have Netflix so it's not a regular thing for us.
I had been going to add that she did find a happy romantic partner later in life and perhaps, had she not died at such an untimely age, might have explored other family models in her books BUT it appears (based on lawsuits from her daughters) that her boyfriend/partner/trustee may have manipulated her into changing her will while she was terminally ill among other things which is...just really sad.
It's always interesting to me to read about an author's personal life. It's funny how sometimes it connects with the literature and other times it doesn't. I have nothing against Dewdney personally. Her untimely death is certainly very sad.
I read my daughter Llama Llama Red Pajama because I thought it would be a cute rhyming story. It's about little Llama having trouble falling asleep. He calls down to her and Mama Llama says she'll be right up to check on him, but gets distracted by a phone call. Meanwhile, little Llama completely freaks out and has a meltdown waiting for Mama. She eventually gets back upstairs and all is well.
Before we got to the resolution, my daughter became just as upset as little Llama and started genuinely crying along with him. She did not like the book and wasn't interested in reading it again.
(For what it's worth, we also couldn't read Babar because she cried at the beginning when the mother died and refused to hear the rest of the story.)
We found that Is Your Mama A Llama is a much better option for a cute rhyming story about mamas and llamas.
Now that I think about it, my son felt the same way.
There was another kids book that didn’t have any negative message but did show a kid acting out (much more mildly than the llama) called “I’m not sleepy!” Even at age two he wasn’t a fan of those pictures even if he couldn’t say why.
There's something very unsettling (and at bedtime no less !) about these children's books that seem to glamorize the bratty child. Not something we want to introduce into their imaginations through picture books.
At bedtime I read my 2 year old "the house in the night" and she LOVES it. The art is so rich, and the pacing is so peaceful. It shows, not tells, the quiet joy of a nuclear family settling in for the night. It couldn't be more different than the Red Pajama book being described.
These books can be disturbing for a child I suspect. I’ll look into the alternative Llama book you mention!
Interesting read! We have one Llama Llama book (Llama Llama Nighty Night) and my toddlers are absolutely obsessed with it from a very early age…it walks through a bedtime routine very similar to ours, and they definitely see the parallels. I’ve read it uncountable times and genuinely see nothing concerning in it (no dad involved true, but my husband is usually doing dishes and tidying up while we do bedtime routines anyway…and many many many children’s books don’t include a visible father for bedtime, etc., so that never jumped out at me).
However…I have only encountered the Red Pajama one prior to having kids but have no interest in introducing bedtime tantrums before they’re self-invented haha.
No need to toss something that isn't alarming!
You become what you consume. Very interesting piece!
Twaddle at its finest!
Interesting. We all liked Llama Llama Red Pajama, but yes, Baby did ask where the daddy llama was. The children's book that disgusted me the most was Elephants Do Not Belong in Trees. It's like the evil twin of the Saggy Baggy Elephant.
Yep. Llama see, llama do.