My daughter has just started
babbling. She loves looking at pictures
in story books and speaking with them. Although she doesn’t really understand what I
read out to her, it scares me to think of the day that she will actually learn
and comprehend this stuff.
Look at all the popular stories
for children – Snow White, Rapunzel, The Ugly Duckling, Three Little Pigs et
al. All of them are centered around a wicked stepmother, a jealous queen or
worse still, concepts of ugly and bad!
Why would I want to drill into
her that looking beautiful is even a virtue? I will someday have to explain to
her what it means to look ugly. She will probably think that people feeling
jealous or being cruel is acceptable, because her childhood stories revolved
around these emotions. Of course, in all these stories, the good guy wins at
the end of the day, but my point is – why even tell children the negative
things to begin with?
I know, the sad fact is that she will
anyway grow up to understand and probably use these terms in some context or
the other, but I hate to be the one teaching her this. It feels like I am
killing her innocence, it just feels so… wrong.
I would rather have her confuse a
wolf with a wolverine, or even better, think that the wolf is a smoking hot
picture of Hugh Jackman than a big bad guy who goes around blowing down pigs
houses. So instead of looking at a story
book today, we read the latest issue of Lonely Planet. :)
But hope is not lost, because I
found this wonderful publishing house based in Chennai – Tulika. Check out their
stuff, it really is heartwarming and oh-so-Indian! http://www.tulikabooks.com/. Can’t
wait to go an ransack their store!
