The Grim Truth Behind Our Beloved Children’s Books: My toddler loves books like But Not the Hippopotamus, Babar the Elephant, and Yertle the Turtle. But the world he’s inheriting is losing these animals at an astonishing rate.
by thenewrepublic
The Grim Truth Behind Our Beloved Children’s Books: My toddler loves books like But Not the Hippopotamus, Babar the Elephant, and Yertle the Turtle. But the world he’s inheriting is losing these animals at an astonishing rate.
by thenewrepublic
2 comments
Aaron Regunberg:
> Someday I will have to tell my son the truth—that the world he’s imagined and which his books and toys have portrayed has very little to do with the world he is inheriting.
This is why I find natalism so confounding.
> I often wonder how I will explain this reality to my son. How I’ll tell him that every day as we’ve sat and read together, I’ve been feeding him lies…
I was born into the It Get’s Better™️ era, and let me just dispell any notions here because either you get better at dealing with it or you don’t, but the reality we inhabit does not seem to keep pace with what we’ve been telling our offspring (and ourselves).