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As a parent, I have discovered that there is a line of newer Berenstain Bears books to be avoided, that are all about "obedience" & "respect" & "counting your blessings." But this Thanksgiving-themed one crept into our house (not on my watch, ahem)
My child (3.5) asks me to read it constantly, bc she knows I don't like it. I say I will, if I can tell her why I don't. So I talk about how the new bears took the land from the "Native Bears." ("Are they mean?" she asks) But this one is weird. What "enemies from across the sea"?
I guess this next page is supposed to be the post-Civil War period, so that makes the "enemies from across the sea" thing even more confusing. (Maybe that was supposed to refer to the Revolution & the War of 1812, and the book just skipped over the Civil War?)
For this part, I just make an extended barfing noise, I really am failing, but how to explain to a preschooler what is going on here?????
In a 2016 NYT Mag piece about the Bears' late turn toward Christianity, @saulausterlitz wrote, uneasily, that the books seemed to have "abandoned their universal appeal," while gaining a new audience of homeschoolers https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/magazine/how-the-berenstain-bears-found-salvation.html
As a parent, it feels very weird to say "I don't want my kid to read a book about respect." But this Thanksgiving book pulls back the curtain and shows how much badness the ones with apparently anodyne childhood "lessons" conceal
I have our copy in my office now and I plan to give it away whenever I can. But she remembers everything now & will ask for it. How to tell a child "I don't want you to read that book"? And find a way to explain "Because it's poison"?
