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| Hearsay: |
You know how I feel about Love You Forever, right? Creepiest fucking book ever written. It’s like Stephen King’s Misery, but for toddlers. In fact, it’s not even for toddlers. It’s an enabling work for possessive parents with abandonment issues. I always imagine the title being whispered in a sinister, possessed voice over windchimes tinkling in a minor key. “Love You… FOREVER….” That mother is psychotic. I’m not trying to be funny here, people. Someone seriously needs to institutionalize that woman. Well, my other pet peeve is The Giving Tree, in which a little sociopath allegorically (and inadvertently) illustrates everything that’s wrong with the patriarchy/capitalism by absent mindedly using and abusing a mother/nature figure. Thankfully, someone else has got my back.
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. I guess that this is a pretty common target in these kinds of discussions, but damn is it ever deserved. Tree loves boy. Boy loves tree. Boy grows up. Boy exploits tree. Tree takes it all silently, growing less happy with each lonely year. Boy gets old, tree is a stump, boy sits on tree, no apologies. I mean, I get the point: the tree loves the boy. But heck, even Jesus was able to rise triumphant when all was said and done; couldn’t Silverstein have made the love at least a little more, you know, mutual? (Other questions: Why didn’t the tree’s apples grow back? And how did the boy build himself and his family a house out of branches?)
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July 28th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Anything by Madonna
July 28th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Oh come on, it’s not like we even KNOW Lourdes, let alone enough to pass judgment on her like that.
July 28th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
It was Bart Simpson that wrote, “The Giving Tree is a chump.”
One of my least favourites is Margaret Wise Brown’s Good Night Moon. I’m also with you on Love You Forever.
July 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I feel vindicated. I never read Good Night Moon as a kid, and when I read it as an adult, my thought was, wtf??
Ok, I’m gonna go out on a limb here…I reread Babar as an adult, and um…it really creeped me out.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Since somebody mentioned Babar, the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik wrote an interesting article on the controversies and political interpretations surrounding it:
July 29th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Yes, I remember that article. Fascinating stuff. Babar is still creepy, though.
July 29th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Also any children’s book by Margaret Atwood. – Honey, you’re a celebrated author but that doesn’t mean you can master any genre. Children’s literature should be more respected. I hate that everyone thinks they can just put out any old crap they think up as children’s book.
The book with purple in the title was particularly awful.
July 29th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Read Goodnight Bush to your kids instead of Goodnight Moon – they’ll get a lot more out of it. For one thing, the adult Dubya is on the same intellectual level as they are. They can relate to him, even if they
find him a bit silly and/or scary.
Also, has anybody else noticed that the illustrations in The Giving Tree don’t quite synch with the narrative? When the boy is at the “I want to get married and start a family” age (presumably in his twenties), the illustration makes him look like a paunchy middle-aged man. And when he’s about to retire (65-ish), he already looks like a decrepit geezer. As for the narrative, don’t even get me started on how he built both a house and a boat from a single tree. But despite all that, I actually like the story for its unconditional, love-your-kids-even-if-they-don’t-reciprocate-but-instead-endlessly-exploit-you message.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I’ve always found the “Pat the Bunny” series a little disturbing because it was asking kids to “pet” the spot pretty much between the legs of the little bunny character. How rude!!!
July 30th, 2009 at 11:01 am
The Hockey Sweater! What a horribly depressing ending!
July 31st, 2009 at 11:03 am
Rainbow Fish. Jane Yolen once said that the Triumvirate of Mediocrity was Love You Forever, The Giving Tree and Rainbow Fish. Trust me on this one.