The 8 Worst Books for Your Young Child’s Imagination

Let me guide you through the morass of children's "literature"

There are so many bad books out there, that I could probably create this list simply by selecting 10 at random from our local California Public Woke Library (you know, where they host drag queen story hour and during Easter display every book ever written about Ramadan but not a single book about Easter). 

 So, the specific titles I have chosen are somewhat arbitrary, but I have tried to cover a variety of harmful themes. That way, it will be easier to recognize their types when you come across them at your own local woke library (just don’t decide to brave it during the month of June). 

The descriptions of each book and the reasons they are bad can help you to identify the typical storylines, characters, and messages in what passes for today’s children’s “literature.” And it’ll help you to put such books where they belong—back into the hands of that non-binary blue-haired librarian!

Now, before you find yourself in a huff for me including classics like the Berenstain Bears or a seemingly harmless 1980s Little Critter book, hear me out. Some books are harmful precisely because they are subtle. Remember, no book or show has “no message.” Nothing is just “fun and easy” reading. Everything contains a message of some kind. It may be between the lines or illustrated in the pictures, but trust me, it’s there. It is your job, dear reader, to vet these books and to determine what that message is.

But, like Virgil guiding Dante, let me lead you through the inferno of the children’s section of today’s modern libraries and bookstores. Surely, amidst all that detritus, there are some gems that you can pick up and treasure. There are few things worth more than a fantastic home library with selections of books for all readers, from youngest to oldest. 

1. Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard

I hesitate to list this one at number 1. There is truly nothing special about it, other than that it is bad, but mediocre bad. Its mediocrity should destine it to never be on a list (or a bookshelf), but it contains an ingredient of modern secular discourse that ought to be avoided at all costs: sarcasm. This is something you never want to hear from your child, especially your young child, which is the target audience of this book.

In sum, the message of this book is that no matter how mean and sarcastic you might be, the world will come singing and dancing to your aid to cheer you up and brighten your day! That may be a fantasy of many of our liberal counterparts, and many of them, no doubt, go on believing it. But for us ordinary folk who live by the laws God has ordained for us, we know this to be a fantasy.

Here’s a plot summary: a bird wakes up one day and is grumpy. He strolls past several friendly animals, who all greet him cheerfully. He either ignores them or responds with sarcasm.

I bought this book because my five-year-old was having trouble, shall we say, managing his emotions. I did a quick search for top young children’s books for dealing with feelings and this popped up. I should have done further research.  

As I explained to the five-year-old, who happened upon the book as soon as he tore open that Amazon package, I cannot read this book anymore because this book lies to us. How does it lie, he asks? It lies, I tell him, because the bird is grouchy and mean to everyone around him, yet he still gathers a bunch of nice friends around him. I then ask: if you are mean to your brothers or to your friends, do you think they will keep trying to play with you? No, he answers. He is wiser than the author. 

Contrast this book with a different book about emotions for young children, Color Monster. This story opens with a little girl telling the emotionally mixed up monster, “You should try to separate” your emotions. “Let’s try to make sense of how you feel.” This book is about getting a child to reflect on and understand the different emotions. Grumpy Bird teaches children that controlling our emotions is the responsibility of other people. Not only is this unhelpful for children figuring out how to sort their emotions, it is destructive to their sense of agency and responsibility. 

Of course, young children, are not going to be able to conduct a philosophical analysis of Grumpy Bird (that is where I come in), but they are going to intuit these messages from the storyline. They are going to absorb the lesson that they can wake up grumpy (normal and okay), lash out (not okay), and ultimately be entertained and placated by those around them (disordered). 

It is odd that the author should have felt it appropriate to indulge in this devilish form of “humor” in a board book meant for very young children. Halfway through when Bird comes to Beaver, who asks what he is doing, Bird responds, “Let me give you a hint. You do it by placing one foot in front of the other.” This line comes on the heals of Bird snapping at Raccoon, “I’m walking. What does it look like?” 

Are those the phrases you want to hear repeated from your 5-year-old when you ask what he is doing? Didn’t think so. Spare the parents at the thrift store. This one belongs in the garbage. 

2. Arthur’s Loose Tooth by Lillian Hoban

This book my eldest picked up at the library. Since he had just lost his first tooth, I thought it would be a nice read for us. After previewing it, I put it straightaway on my banned shelf (yes, this actually exists. I keep these books for my research, in order to protect you, dear reader, from my mistakes).

Arthur terrorizes his sister and their babysitter throughout the evening as he agonizes over whether to pull his loose tooth. In the meantime, he tears around the house knocking things over and destroying furnishings while he pretends to be “Captain Fearless.” He then chastises his younger sister, who had asked him to go up the stairs with her because she is afraid of the dark.

Arthur is similarly nasty to the babysitter who has prepared dinner and a special dessert for him. The book mercifully ends when Arthur has his tooth yanked out and he is given his dessert for “being so brave.” 

It’s not hard to see why this one makes the list. The main character is a whiny brat and holy terror, and receives no consequences for his atrocious behavior. Instead, he is rewarded at the end with two desserts! 

This is the modern understanding of a “humorous and lighthearted” children’s story that is supposedly representing to children the virtue of bravery. It was written in the 1980s when it was still okay to have a mom and a dad, so the book at least has that going for it. But it shows where the culture was already headed. The time of representing beauty (the characters in this book are, to put it bluntly, hideous) and civilization in a creative and genuinely lighthearted and humorous manner had already passed.  

Finally, even if the message of this book weren’t so toxic, I would still be loathe to read it for how tedious and repetitive it is.

3. Tomorrow I will be Brave by Jessica Hische

Like other books on this list, this one isn’t going to turn your child into that non-binary librarian, but there is a subtle message throughout this book that you probably don’t want your Christian child to absorb. 

Tomorrow I will be Brave lists the contemporary cardinal virtues—adventurous, strong, smart, curious, creative, confident, and brave—and on each page, says “Tomorrow I’ll be ______ (fill in the blank with one of the above).” There are two things going on here. First, is the selection of virtues. Notice what is missing—any of the Christian virtues—humility, charity, hope, faith, loving neighbor, magnanimity. None of that. 

Moreover, the “values” being pushed are nothing close to the classical understanding. “Tomorrow I’ll be brave. There’s nothing I can’t do.” Pay attention to this notion of limitlessness. Doing away with any and all limits is a hallmark of modern secularism. This is a very destructive message, especially for young people, who need to be taught the opposite: life is full of limits. The sooner they learn that, the better off they will be. 

Second, this book presents the problem of putting off being virtuous until “tomorrow.” This is either suggesting that these are virtues to strive after, but it’s okay if they don’t feel like doing it now. The book concludes with, “tomorrow I’ll be all of the things I could not be today.” It does not set the bar very high. 

An added strike against this book is that it is just plain boring. It states the virtues that it wants us to “be” “tomorrow” and then moves on to the next one. A good book should show us these virtues in action rather than state them—and this is especially true for young children, who can make little or no sense of abstract precepts. To appreciate the power of being creative, children need to see “make believe” in action, in the form of a storyline. To understand the virtue of being brave (formerly known as courage), children must be shown what that means (this is why my boys love knight stories at this age).

As for this book, there’s no storyline. The illustrations are, to my untrained eye, computer generated and not what I would consider beautiful or compelling in the humane and classical sense. But they are bright and colorful. 

This book seems like more of a therapeutic book for adults who procrastinate than truly a children’s book.

4. The Big Honey Hunt by Stanley and Janice Berenstain

I was surprised to learn that this book was published in 1962, but it also means that its message was beginning to emerge then and has now become all too common: the silly, bumbling father who should have listened to his smart wife. This book is only one in a chorus of books, tv shows, movies, and advertisements that send the message that women are smarter than men, and especially smarter than their husbands, who are so often depicted as stupid and incompetent. 

In this story, the family discovers at breakfast that they are out of honey, so the father decides to take his son on a honey hunt. The dad is excited and has high hopes for this trip with his son. His wife watches nervously from the door as father and son dash away. The story follows the two as the father leads his son from one disaster to the next, nearly being eaten or stung by various animals on their search for a tree with honey inside. In the end, the father concedes. 

Throughout the book, the son questions his father. 

“Are you getting honey?

Are you doing well?

Or is something wrong?

I smell a smell.”

The sense we get is that the son is not entirely confident in his father’s ability to find honey. In the end, the father throws in the towel.

“The best sort of honey

Never comes from bees.

It comes from a store.

I would like some,

Please.”

The honey vendor and the bear’s wife are in the illustration looking rather smug. I told you so, is clearly the look on their Berenstain Bear faces. 

Contrast the portrayal of this doofy, bumbling father with the father in Children of the Forest. There, the father is depicted as a strong protector of his children. He is at once tough (killing a viper that threatened his little ones) and gentle (telling the children stories of the past as they sit together around the fire).

Portraying husbands and fathers as incompetent and fools is a theme so common on television and in advertisements that it has become cliche, even as it continues to damage our perception of men in society. And this brings me to number 5 on the list.

5. Just Go to Bed by Mercer Mayer

This just about says it all.

The extent to which this book annoys me suggests that it must belong on this list somewhere. Sure enough, once I gave it some thought, I was able to more than justify plopping it at number 5. I have two big problems with this book: the character of the child and the character of the father. The former is an unruly monster (depicted accurately as a hideous and unkempt “creature”) and the latter is weak and effeminate. The father cannot get his child to go to bed without constant nagging, begging, and accommodating. 

Yes, yes, you may think that I am a curmudgeon, but really read the book and look at the pictures. What is the message that it sends to children and also to their parents? That it is normal to have to ask your child to go to bed 25 times and in the meantime to chase him around the house while he plays games and makes messes and makes demands. 

It also normalizes the two-child family—a minor point and one that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but in this context, it shows that the dad has all the time in the world to devote to putting this monster to bed because he has only one younger sibling. 

6. Woke Baby by Mahogany L. Browne and Theodore Taylor III

You just can’t make this stuff up!

Woke Baby is admittedly extreme in its obvious political messaging, but just so you don’t think that this book is rare or obscure, I found it prominently displayed on the shelves (yes it was in more than one location) of Barnes and Noble. I can assure you that was the last time I stepped foot in that store. 

This over-the-top piece of propaganda meant for your toddler (it is a board book), almost left me speechless. It follows the day of a baby and interprets her every stretch and wiggle as an attempt to break the “glass ceiling” and “reach for justice.” It would be laughable if it weren’t part of a real and ongoing effort to radicalize young children. Like the end of most baby books, it closes with a picture of a baby yawning and ready for sleep, except it reads “Like a good revolutionary, you never, ever sleep.” The end. 

Enough said on that one.  

7. My Busy Day, Part of My Big Wimmelbooks

I’m sad that Wimmelbooks are no longer appropriate for children. My kids love the “old” At the Construction Site Wimmelbook (published in 2018!), which is a harmless picture book full of seek-and-find characters at various worksites.  On the first page of these highly detailed and busy picture books are all of the characters that are repeated throughout. Each character is given a little bio and the kids are supposed to look for them as they look at each page. 

The new Wimmelbooks have a decidedly woke agenda, as is clear by their character choices, and aggressively push it on the very young. In My Busy Day, there is a pink-haired apparently “non-binary” single mother, two boys with “two dads,” a family with a mother and an androgynous-looking co-parent, and yet another pink-haired “dog-sitter” character. 

The point of these characters is to normalize what used to be considered deviant behavior. By depicting them (and they are repeated on every page), this book is showing children that divorce, “two dads,” and cropped pink hair is normal and an everyday occurrence. 

If you are reading this, you already know that behind the scenes, things are not as they appear, and certainly not the rosy “modern family” picture portrayed in the new Wimmelbooks. So look for Wimmelbooks published before 2018. 

8. Goodnight Already! by Jory John and Benji Davies

How I felt reading this book.

This book is representative of what turn-of-the-century homeschooling pioneer Charlotte Mason called “twaddle.” Twaddle, Ms. Mason tells us, is "trivial and foolish."

But this book illustrates the meaning of that word better than any definition ever could.

Goodnight Already! takes a boring story line and makes it worse.

Bear is trying to fall asleep but suffers from constant interruption from his inconsiderate friend Duck, who continues to harass the exhausted bear.

"Hey! I'm Bored! Want to hang out?" After listing a dozen activities to which Bear responds "no" each time, Duck leaves. "Whatever." Bear says. "Ahh. Bed. Yes." "Almost . . . asleep . . . ." It's got the cadence of caveman speech.

Duck reappears asking for the ingredients to make cookies. Then Bear: "That duck . . . always bothering me! . . . I need to get some new neighbors. . . ." ". . . Later, though. . . too tired . . . must sleep." (The ellipses are all in the original, by the way, lest you think I've cut out some essential text for this analysis!).

Again, Duck shows up. After another tedious back-and-forth, Bear sends him away again. "Jeez, Bear is so grouchy! His bad attitude is making me tired." This is the quintessence of Mason's idea of "twaddle." The speech is so uninspired and unimaginative that it pained me to read this book. Dare I go so far (my husband would certainly stop me right here) as to say that there is something disrespectful toward children in trying to pass off this twaddle as literature and entertainment.

The reason that we read to young children is to broaden their minds, form their hearts, build their imaginations and vocabulary, and build the habit of attention, among other things. When we read twaddle, we whet their appetites for the trite, trivial, and banal. It serves little purpose. It does not encourage the building of new vocabulary and concepts and ideas. It does not encourage the growth of imagination. It does not elevate their senses. It does not form their hearts and minds.

So, we must ask ourselves why we are reading such books to our kids? I asked myself that very question when I found myself reading one of the tortuous Thomas the Train books for the umpteenth time to my toddler. I would dread the bedtime story. Do I have to read this, I would ask? No, I decided. I do not. Life is too short.

When I started to pick up the types of books that I found enjoyable, I realized why I enjoyed them: the prose were better, the storyline was better, and the illustrations (if there were any) were usually better. And these books were usually older.

As it turned out, my children enjoyed them too.

Both form (the way in which the story is written) and content (the storyline itself) matter. And the two usually travel together. Bad form usually means bad content and vice versa. Reading is not just about the child hearing words, any words. There can be beauty and even musicality in well-written literature, even books written for little ones.

Crack open a Frog and Toad story right after reading Goodnight Already! You’ll see that books written even for the youngest children can be engaging, witty, and well-written. They can even, like Frog and Toad, touch upon those aspects of human nature that we all share and can have a good laugh at.