"This is why a lot of contemporary children’s literature is at a deplorably low standard. I’ve included a few high-level articles in the links below, which provide overviews of this situation. My guess as to why it is so bad — so saccharine, so crude, so unbearably preachy while being flat and pointless — is that many progressive people today mistake books for “information.” Just like Nancy Reagan, they seem to believe that imparting an inspiring message is sufficient for that message to take root."
Yes indeed. I co-host a podcast on children's horror and while there are notable exceptions, I find the children's literature we cover from the 60s through the 90s is so much richer than contemporary literature because of a willingness to be non-didactic, poetically obscure, weird and sometimes troublesome.
My personal loathsome is reserved, in terms of books "for" kids (though really for liberal parents), for the 'Little People Big Ideas' books which I hate with a passion that is perhaps excessive. Tempted to cynically start a parody series on serial killers called 'Little People Sick Ideas'.
It's amazing how many institutions incinerated decades of cultural cache and prestige in a fit of low grade Maoism and got absolutely nothing in return for their trouble
"checking the trapline": I laughed out loud!
"This is why a lot of contemporary children’s literature is at a deplorably low standard. I’ve included a few high-level articles in the links below, which provide overviews of this situation. My guess as to why it is so bad — so saccharine, so crude, so unbearably preachy while being flat and pointless — is that many progressive people today mistake books for “information.” Just like Nancy Reagan, they seem to believe that imparting an inspiring message is sufficient for that message to take root."
Yes indeed. I co-host a podcast on children's horror and while there are notable exceptions, I find the children's literature we cover from the 60s through the 90s is so much richer than contemporary literature because of a willingness to be non-didactic, poetically obscure, weird and sometimes troublesome.
My personal loathsome is reserved, in terms of books "for" kids (though really for liberal parents), for the 'Little People Big Ideas' books which I hate with a passion that is perhaps excessive. Tempted to cynically start a parody series on serial killers called 'Little People Sick Ideas'.
It's amazing how many institutions incinerated decades of cultural cache and prestige in a fit of low grade Maoism and got absolutely nothing in return for their trouble