Getting back to Brain, Child...the first essay I read this month, Love, Tween Style by Veronica Chater, fascinated me with its insights into the hormonal minds of adolescent boys. The author describes how she refrains from stepping in with advice for her adolescent boys, and realizes that her sons arrive at the same conclusion of moral advice on their own.Parenting isn't the only method of influencing our children's decisions: the books they read teach children morals either directly or indirectly. The conclusions of Aesop's fables always centered on "the moral of the story is..."
Although today's publishers stay away from such direct obvious statements about morals, many children's books have messages in them for the readers. Parents may or may not choose to directly discuss the moral or message of a story with a child, but the child takes it in one way or another.
What's your favorite message or moral from a children's book? How did it influence you as a child?
2 comments:
I like the Little Engine That Could. It teaches that you can do anything if you believe you can.
A lot of the books these days I've come across are so 'modernized' that I don't find value in all of them. With the 'hip' language and 'sassy' attitude I keep with the classics. There is one set of books we do enjoy though - The Pigeon Books by Mo Willems. They have fun pictures and a great voice and a good moral. Like sharing and not making fun of others.
I too approach Brain, Child like chocolate...but I devour it all in one sitting (which is how I deal with chocolate as well). The teen/tween love angst story was terrifying (maybe because I also have twin boys...but fortunately we're some years away such troubles). As far as stories with morals, I have to disagree--most of the "character" type books like Franklin, Arthur, the Berenstain Bears and even (sadly) Little Critter practically beat you over the head with the moral...I prefer a more sublte approach...though I can't think of one at the moment.
Post a Comment