Basic HTML Version
April 1971
What
Should VOUR
Children
Read?
(Contimted from page
16)
(vol. 24, no.
2,
p. 57). Of course,
Jack's own crimes which got him into
trouble -
lying, deceit, trespassing,
theft - aren't punished. Two wrongs
do make everything right, children
learn.
Wish fulfillment g11aranteed.
The
ugly duckling just wished he were
handsome. Without work, he became
so. Cinderella wished to go to the dress
ball. A "fairy godmother" magically
fulfilled her wish. The frog became
a Prince Charming by similar wish
fulfillment.
This influence can be dangerous for
children. It is a magical "get-something–
for-nothing" philosophy. Or, perhaps
worse, it involves the wrong principie of
coveting - desiring to have something
or to be someone we are not.
lmproper came and effect.
Death–
dealing blows don't even cause an
injury. Laziness
is
rewarded with a
lucky windfall of wealth. Unsavory
characters become heroes without ever
changing their ways. "Watch a child
read the funnies," says one author. "See
if he shivers at the sight of someone
who dropped from a height and landed
on his head.
The)' had previ01uly dis–
connected the idea that it httrt.
The
same is true of folklore" (Phyllis Fen–
ner,
The Proof of the Pttdding: What
Children Read,
John Day, 1957, p. 51).
Perhaps most serious of all is the fol–
Jowing point.
Belief in fairy creatm·es t·eplaces
belief
i11
God.
Most children know a lot
more about Santa Claus, Peter Pan,
Alice, the Fairy Godmother, and the
entire fantasy pantheon than they do
about God, Jesus , or the leading figures
in the Bible.
Children are not mature enough to
separate God from the fantasies they
hear. One little fellow, sadly dis–
illusioned about "Santa Claus," said to
The
PLAlN TRUTH
a playmate, "Yes, and I'm going to look
into this 'Jesus Christ' business, too!"
The vast majority of parents have
allowed their children to learn
onl)'
about the mythical "other gods before
them."
Sorne other weaknesses of fairy tales
are that they usually lack any positive
moral. Also, "things happen in them
that are not true to natural laws," as one
parent said. In addition, most fairy tales
are not relevant to modern life.
Julius Lester
writing in a
Plfbiisher's W eekly
article entitled "The
Kinds of Books We Give Children:
Whose Nonsense
?" -
laments that "in
the books we write and publish for chil–
dren, we create a world that bears little
resemblance to the one the child is
growing into - our own.
" ... I was never able to find any
relation between the world in children's
books and the world in which 1 lived.
" ... In a world in which a child can
be dead from an overdose of heroin at
age
12,
Snow White is not only inade-
37
quate, it is in danger of being vul–
gar"
(Publisher's Weekly,
February 23,
1970, pp. 86-88).
What About Comic Books?
But what about other fantasy-type lit–
erature, comic books for instance? The
same basic problems contained in fairy
tales are all present in comics. They are
largely just fairy tales in another form.
From 1955 to about 1969, comics
generally declined in sales and popu–
larity. It was in 1955 that a Senate Sub–
committee, at the urging of citizens who
had read Dr. Frederick Wertham's anti–
comic exposé
Sed!lction of the lnnocml,
forced the Comic Code Authority
(CCA) to se!I-censor all excessive vio–
lence, sex, sadism, death, and the other
major selling points of the comics.
Comics now sell about 30 million
copies per month, clown from about 90
million in 1955. But since 1969, comic
consumption has begun to grow upward
again, partly due to introduction of so–
caBed "relevant" themes (student riots,
PARENTAL SUPERVISION
VITAL -Parents should spend time reading to
children - and should choose right reading material which children will
read
by
themselves.
Ambouodor
Col/ogo Photo