Raisin Reads: A Few Chapter Books and Picture Books
Now that he’s reading a mile-a-minute, it’s time to hear from Raisin again! (more…)
(Cybils 2012) Fairy Tales
I love reading my son fairy tales. I particularly love fairy tales retold. The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszkca (1989) was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. I love hearing a familiar story from some other characters point of view! Also, my own son has gone through his own love-phase with one fairy tale in particular, the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story. So of course the fairy tale books on the Cybils 2012 list have simply called out to me. (more…)
Thoughts on The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
Yesterday, I reread The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks (first published 1981). I loved it as a child. I remember learning about Iroquois Indians and longhouses and being fascinated. I loved the magical adventure when a toy comes to life.
For those that have not yet read the children’s novel, young Omri locks his plastic toy American Indian in a cupboard and the Indian comes to life! His friend does the same to his plastic cowboy, and the result is disastrous.
As an adult, I’m incredibly uncomfortable with the basic errors (false and negative stereotypes) in this book. I also recently finished a nonfiction book about the first Americans, 1491 by Charles Mann, so I believe that my perspective on how the native Indians really were makes me uncomfortable with the stereotypes encountered in this children’s novel today. Looking at The Indian in the Cupboard 30 years after it was first published, I certainly see it as inappropriate and dated. I’m not just trying to be “politically correct” although that is a term that could be applied to me I suppose. It’s somewhat disturbing to read the inaccuracies and the inherent racism in the boys comments … and in the author’s suggestions from those comments.
A few of the things that disturbed me:
- The Indian’s pidgin English. While I’m sure there would have been some language barrier between American Indians and colonists in the early 1700s, the Indian’s pidgin is ridiculously stereotyped. Did the author research how he’d have spoken, or was Little Bear’s English based on the stereotypes in Westerns?
- The Indian is stereotyped as a proud warrior that wants to kill and scalp because he can. Scalping was not that wide spread, and while there was scalping during the French-Indian War, Little Bear’s obsession seems disproportional to what I’ve found about the Natives. Few Haudenosaunee warriors joined the British in campaigns.
- Little Bear calls himself Iroquois when he really would have called himself Haudenosaunee. There are other out of character things. The chiefs of the Five Nations were not so bossy; it was much more of a council. That Little Bear would assume the title chief after the unknown chief died in the cupboard just doesn’t resonate with who his people were in terms of government. “Chief” is quite a symbol of respect, not necessarily a self-appointed inherited title.
- The cowboy’s racist attitudes toward the Indian may fit in with the Westerns on TV in the ’70s and ’80s, but how accurate were they? As soon as he saw the Indian, he wanted to kill him. Did 1880s cowboys just immediately kill Indians they saw? This seemed rather extreme and stereotypical.
- Neither one of the magical toys were people; they were types. True, Little Bear was brave and the cowboy was wimpy. But then boys turned on the TV and became just as racist, laughing at the Western. The characters in the book were like those in a glorified Western (albeit one for kids). What does this really say about the people who supposedly really lived in history? Omri supposedly has learned they are people with feelings, but he’s still playing with them right up to the end.
- Others have compared playing cowboys and Indians to something as offensive to playing slave master and slave. While I’m not sure about that, there is something inherently unequal, unfair, and discomforting about portraying these “people” as toys to interact with each other, starting with the fact that Omri felt he couldn’t play with the Indian unless he had a cowboy as well.
All this is somewhat sad for me to say, since the book is well paced, magical, and simply fun from my WASPy perspective in the twenty-first century. It’s too bad its not one I can readily recommend today. If I were American Indian, I would not have found it “fun.” And that to me is a good reason I shouldn’t be encouraging my son to read it.
What do you think?
To put it another way, at what point is racism in semi-classic literature no longer okay? I ask because there were likewise a few racist comments in The Secret Garden where I recently reread, and I’ve encountered it before in other older classics for children, like Kipling and so forth. But it surprised me how racist this book was, and it’s only thirty years old.
At any rate, if I do hand it to my son when he’s older, it will be with lots of discussion about the attitudes and inaccuracies found therein.
Raisin Reads: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Raisin and I saw the musical of The Wizard of Oz two years ago (when he was two years old), and he greatly enjoyed it. Somehow, he loved the movie too, even with the scary monkeys. Over the past two years, I’ve occasionally spied him acting out the story line (four friends go on an adventure down the Yellow Brick Road) with his stuffed animals. It definitely was time to visit the original story.
It’s hard to read the original for a story well known in another format (in this case, the well-popularized movie is much more familiar to me than the novel on which it was based). It’s probably scandalous for me to admit that the original story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (originally published 1900) leaves me unsatisfied. True lovers of classics, especially children’s classics, will probably be upset with me. But I can’t deny it: I don’t particularly like the book (and I’m ducking to avoid the rotten tomatoes). I feel that while the movie’s plot is tight and clever(more…)
- Because this post is about the book and not the movie, I’ll relegate these thoughts to a footnote: In the movie, Dorothy, who doesn’t believe in herself, must find the strength within herself to get home, and in the end her dreams come true as she does so. I love how the entire movie story was actually a dream, and yet it still helped her find her place. ↩
Kids Corner: First Quarter 2012
First quarter 2012 has been spare on the blogging front, but it’s been busy and delightful on the home front from my perspective! Strawberry is now five weeks old, and Raisin and I are starting to settle in to a routine again of reading picture books. I’m reading Strawberry The Secret Garden aloud, and occasionally Raisin and I read a chapter in a Boxcar Children novel.
In general, the past few months have found Raisin steering himself toward the early reader books, partly because he love the sense of accomplishment when he can read to me and partly because I haven’t had as much time to read picture books to him! We have found some memorable picture books in the past weeks, but we haven’t been plowing through them at the rate (30+ a week) that we read them last year. We both are eagerly awaiting the time when Strawberry will show an interest in the board books Raisin tries to show her.
In addition, since January, we’ve done a fair amount of “school at home,” which Raisin regulary asks for because he simply loves to learn. I hope that his interest continues because I’ve enjoyed learning with him.
This post is huge because I don’t want to split it up: it’s much easier to keep it all together. So I apologize that it is so long, but I don’t know when the next time I’ll have to blog will be so here we go… (more…)
