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IBAR[nja]W -- Topsys and Turveys
Aug. 19th, 2007 11:53 pmThis is another post for International Blog About Racism [Not Just A] Week. Partly because I'm not very good at keeping to a rigid schedule these days, and partly because I think it's important all year. Even if we were all wise, all learned, all enlightened, and so forth, it would still be important to keep talking about this.
She can read a little, and likes the little-kid books she can read herself. Sometimes adults read harder books to her, and sometimes she stumbles along with books that are a little too hard for her, asking for help with the hard words. Recently, she was reading a book that is mostly a picture book. Not a book of pictures telling a story, like for very young children, but a book of clever drawings showing off how clever they could be. I know her parents are very cautious, much more cautious than I would be, about protecting her from scary books that might give her nightmares. I wasn't thinking in terms of reading ahead to watch for anything inappropriate and protect her from it. I was startled by something I didn't know how to handle, myself, much less know how to teach a child about.
( cut for offensive text )
Looking up the book online, I see that Peter Newell wrote it in 1894. The edition I saw smelled like it was printed in the 1950s. It was probably bought for one of this child's parents or aunts, at a time when the ambient consciousness had not been raised very far. It keeps being passed down to younger children by people who think the drawings are neat. The drawings are pretty neat, if a person likes that sort of thing at all. And most of them are inoffensive. There's just an important difference between "most" and "all." It's so easy to forget a page or two in the years between one child learning to read and the next.
She can read a little, and likes the little-kid books she can read herself. Sometimes adults read harder books to her, and sometimes she stumbles along with books that are a little too hard for her, asking for help with the hard words. Recently, she was reading a book that is mostly a picture book. Not a book of pictures telling a story, like for very young children, but a book of clever drawings showing off how clever they could be. I know her parents are very cautious, much more cautious than I would be, about protecting her from scary books that might give her nightmares. I wasn't thinking in terms of reading ahead to watch for anything inappropriate and protect her from it. I was startled by something I didn't know how to handle, myself, much less know how to teach a child about.
( cut for offensive text )
Looking up the book online, I see that Peter Newell wrote it in 1894. The edition I saw smelled like it was printed in the 1950s. It was probably bought for one of this child's parents or aunts, at a time when the ambient consciousness had not been raised very far. It keeps being passed down to younger children by people who think the drawings are neat. The drawings are pretty neat, if a person likes that sort of thing at all. And most of them are inoffensive. There's just an important difference between "most" and "all." It's so easy to forget a page or two in the years between one child learning to read and the next.
