My under 5s enjoy lots of picture books from the library. Usually these books are very simple, funny or moral. Sometimes there is something different, even surprising. Take for example the much used with early years, "Farmer Duck". It looks like the usual fare but when you read it you find its practically revolutionary propoganda. Fat, lazy farmer makes inarticulate, oppressed duck do all the farm jobs while he lies in bed, shouting down to duck "How goes the work?" (note odd word order). Oppressed duck arranges uprising with other animals during which farmer is thrown off the premises. Duck then presides over joyful peasant/worker rural idyll scene where all the animals co-operate together, under apparant leadership of duck.
That was a surprise.
Then take "Wibbly Pig's Silly Big Bear", by Mick Inkpen. On the back the blurb says, "Being clever is not all that counts. Mick Inkpen's funny and poignant story explores this simple theme." However on reading it it is striking how this story is nothing to do with cleverness.
The Silly Big Bear displays all the qualities of a 18 month old child. He cannot use a spoon to eat peas, cannot use a potty, hides by covering his eyes, scribbles on walls, loves bubbles and bouncing and crashing about. Then it says "And he will disappear your trouble inside a hug", then it goes on to say that when all the bubbles have blown away, when the bear is gone "...we will miss him more than anyone."
WHAT!
Who is the bear? Why does he go? Why do we miss him so? A book for little ones with an apparantly sad ending?
These are my suggestions.
Is the Silly Big Bear the sweetness of little ones, and a warning to us adult readers to enjoy their babyhood before they grow up? The hug from a little one is sweet enough to disappear a trouble. The story suggests that the bear will not be coming back.
Is the Silly Big Bear the innocence of toddlerhood, the joyfulness of laughing at funny things, and the enthusiasm of small children, which we all go through, and then we leave behind forever as we take on the cares of growing up? Silly Big Bear is full of this type of carefree joy.
So why is he so big (he can hardly fit on the page)? Is it because when you have a tiny person in your home they seem to take up the whole place with their things and their mess and their noises and their demands? Does the Silly Big Bear remind us to savour that, for its specialness? Is he so big because for a small person, their feelings and experiences fill up the whole of the world, as they see it?
Well I can't ask Mick Inkpen, so I'll have to just wonder.
And this is why I don't read fiction, except to my children, so that my thoughts will not be overrun by distractions from the rememberence of Allah.
And although this story has reminded me to notice as much as I can before it passes, it also reminds me that whenever you give a work of fiction to a child to read it is like having a stranger sit down with them to explain their take on life. That's a thought, isn't it?
1 comment:
We have the latter book out of the library right now. Must admit I haven't thought so deeply about the ending, although I felt the same that it represents the foibles of toddlers. There's another one with a similar theme but with a happier ending 'if you love a bear' we have. At least with the younger kids books we can pre read them quickly or miss bits out if they cant yet read as we're reading them. I was hearing something on the tv the other day about how children tend to make their opinions from what they hear and read as fact until they get older and more analytical. However I think some deeper meanings don't always make it to our kids as we can perceive the stories. eg I read Noddy avidly as a child but can never remember the negativity re gollywogs and it was only as an adult hearing about this that I ever realised there was a link with racism.
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