Before I became a parent I did not like “Goodnight Moon”. I thought it was very strange and it made no sense to me as a children’s book. Boy was I wrong. After I became a parent and someone gifted us the book…complete 180…my toddlers loved the book, loved the gentle rhyme, loved finding the mouse on every page, lots to discuss about the little bunny, and bed time, and all the objects in the room. It became one of our most beloved children’s books and I have so many happy memories reading it with my munchkins.
Anyone experience something similar? Did experiencing a book with your child change the way you felt about it?
I’ve had the opposite experience of introducing my kids to children’s books I really liked as a kid and they wanted nothing to do with them! ex: “Edith and Mr. Bear” freaked them out. Would love to hear your stories on this kind of “Oops! Nevermind! Maybe this isn’t as ‘classic’ as I thought!” as well. Thanks!
Edit to add: Thank you for all these amazing comments! I’ve read every one and tried to reply as best I could..Edit #2 corrected my Roald Dahl vs. Shel Silverstein mix-up…sorry!
There is a clear concensus in the comment section that these particular books are not as well loved by parents:
**The Giving Tree**: Shel Silvertein is so well loved for the most part, but this book just makes most parents crazy with its message of perpetual sacrifice and the seemingly uncaring beneficiary.
**Rainbow Fish**: People should accept you for who you are, don’t give parts of yourself away to be liked
**I’ll Love You Forever**: Unhealthy boundaries. Climbing into your adult child’s room at night to cuddle is creepy
Runner Up:
**Green Eggs and Ham**: Unhealthy boundaries. No means No, Sam I Am!
Fun side fact: Roald Dahl’s daughter, Ophelia Dahl, is a co-founder of **Partners In Health** along with Dr. Paul Farmer (https://www.pih.org/ophelia-dahl). For decades, they’ve done amazing work around the globe tackling health care for the most poor. Tracy Kidder wrote an amazing book about the founding of the organization, their work in Haiti, and their global fight againt tuberculosis in a fantastic book: “Mountains Beyond Mountains”. Dr. Farmer passed away recently, but Ophelia is still a part of the organization.
by kfkiyanibobani
34 Comments
I don’t think I liked Dr Seuss books growing up, I wasn’t really read to very often so getting the rhyming correct would have been difficult for me. Now that I’m reading, I love them. They are books made to be read aloud.
Peter Pan. Nope. Nope nope nope
“Love You Forever.” I thought it was so sweet when I was little, but now I find it creepy. Still makes me sob, though, lmao.
I picked a number of books to read to my son when he was small. As a boy I loved ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ so that was one of them but he never really warmed to it. What he did go for was the author’s other book, ‘In The Night Kitchen’ which hadn’t appealed to me as a boy. And even as an adult, I thought it was bizarre as fuck – it’s basically a wet dream crossed with Holocaust imagery. I bought it with some misgivings but it was his favorite book for like two years.
I really dislike The Giving Tree! It’s just so awful and sad. The tree gives and gives till she has nothing left and the man just destroys her.
I was obsessed with the Berenstain Bears when I was little and sometimes I’m nostalgic for that world, but there’s a comedian named Rob on TikTok who has been reviewing them and they are pretty terrible. The values in the books are very much “good little children will be obedient and organized and not get fat.” They’re probably responsible for all the crap I’ve been trying to unpack my whole adult life lol.
Sometimes kids gravitate towards truly random books. My favorite memories with my grandfather are him reading me an illustrated version of Jingle Bells, which was literally just the lyrics of the song. I’d beg and beg for it, even if it was July. I didn’t like anyone else reading it though, it was something about his inflection and enthusiasm specifically.
I refused to read my son The Rainbow Fish. I had loved it as a child myself but after being in a relationship with his father I couldn’t bare to read a book encouraging my child to give away little pieces of himself so that people like him. There was no reason that Rainbow Fish should have to give away his shiny scales.
We are big fans of the Pigeon books by Mo Willems and also the “How do Dinosaurs….?” Series. Oh and Elbow Grease.
Goodnight Moon is such a wonderful book. It really mirrors that unmoored feeling, maybe even a tiny bit spooky, that is falling asleep.
Margaret Wise Brown amongst many others was really sort of revolutionary in childrens literature. It’s a bit off topic, but Amy Gary has good biography on her, In The Great Green Room, that really explores her very interesting life.
I LOVED the Teeny Tiny Woman as a kid. Then when I went to read it to my son I couldn’t believe how repetitive it was…also it seems as though she is trying to make soup with a human bone???? He loves it though, so we have fun with it.
What’s interesting about Goodnight Moon that I didn’t appreciate until I was a parent is the passage of time. Look at the clock on each page. This bunny does not want to go to bed and is stretching out each waking moment. It gave me anxiety. Go to sleep kid!
As a kid I loved all those anthropomorphic forest animal books, like Peter Rabbit and all the spin-off characters. My mom (and grandma) loved the Old Mother West Wind stories which are very much in the same vein. Those books are harsh! Like, direct references to disobedient rabbit children getting shot by the farmer, or eaten by a fox, etc. One of the OMWW stories is about a fish named Tommy Trout who didn’t listen to his mom and ends up getting eaten by a big fish because of it. Just like, very old school morals with blunt descriptions of danger/death. I remember these books as cozy and quaint but reading them now they are just kind of disturbing!
Oh, The Places You’ll Go is a common silly high school graduation gift. That book needs to be read, reread and digested as soon as possible. Packing your bags for college it’s too late to change something so important and fundamental.
When I was a kid (and a picky eater), I loved the book *Bread and Jam for Frances* and what I remembered was how great it was that she only ate what she wanted to. When I was a parent, I realized the message is actually the opposite — you’re supposed to learn that it’s great to try all different foods.
Someone gifted me an Elephant and Piggy book at my baby shower and I thought it was a silly book I’d never read. Maybe it took a few years, but my kid loves everything Mo Willems and so do I. The humorous winks to adults is much appreciated. Plus, they’re great books for teaching little ones to start spotting words.
The story of Babar is absolutely bizarre. I loved that as a kid
The Little House books by Laura Ingles Wilder. I was read these as a kid and loved them. I started to read them to my daughter and Holy Smokes is there a whole lot of casual racism all over the place. I was doing some on the fly editing while reading, and sometimes just skipped parts. We only made it to the second book when my daughter lost interest and I wasn’t too upset about not carrying on.
Goodnight Moon!! My kids LOVED when we’d do that book for bedtime. I always changed the last page. “Goodnight ~~noises~~ kisses everywhere!” Then I’d rapid fire kiss all over their faces! They’d giggle like mad. My youngest is 7 and still asks me to read it to him sometimes just for that page.
So I don’t have kids (yet), but have thought about this a lot. When I was growing up my mom read us these books (I believe written in the 50s) about Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, a witch who helps break kids of bad habits that drive their parents crazy. They are short stories without pictures. I always loved them and thought they were so funny, but I read some recently and there are some very dated aspects – gender roles mostly but a few words that are not quite PC. I’m curious how I will feel when I have kids as I connect the stories so much with bedtime and my parents reading to me.
I adored the Doctor Dolittle books as a kid. Imagine my surprise when the n- word appears as I’m visiting memory lane and reading to my daughter. Not to mention the horribly racist caricature of the Prince. Big yikes.
As a teacher this is an interesting thread. There’s several examples here of people wanting to “protect” their kids from books with morals they may disagree with or ambiguous morals like The Giving Tree and Rainbow Fish. I’d just like to suggest that instead of refusing to show these things to your kids, engage them in conversation instead. Ask them what they think they learned from the book and guide a conversation. These books are staples of classrooms and libraries – your kids are going to read them. With any media, book, tv, or otherwise I suggest talking about subjects rather than avoiding them.
The berenstein bears has a whole lot of words in them for a bedtime story. I’m gonna leave it at that.
I loved Frog and Toad as a child, and my love has only grown with age.
I reread coraline last week and I remember it not scaring me at all as a kid, I think a lot of that is due to coralines attitude throughout the book. But as an adult the overall concept was horrifying.
I also think a lot of people paint her real parents as neglectful and I didn’t get that at all from them, they seemed supportive and unbothered by their daughters unconventional habits and questions, just busy. But they never ignored or neglected her. I still love the book but those are my thoughts that have changed since reading it as a kid
I’m not a parent, just a nurse that reads to her neonates at work 🫶🏼
But I read my patient the book The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton & it annoys me 😭 why do they get bathed & into pajamas just to EXERCISE then sleep!?!! It makes no sense & I told my patient so. 😂
I bought the complete set of Dick and Jane books I read as a child. Because they were simple and told a story my grandchildren had a good time learning to read. I would read it though to them then they would take a turn reading it back to grandpa. The look of pride for accomplishment was worth the price of the set. I remember thinking that they were kind of dumb when I was in first grade.
I don’t know that I exactly disliked The Velveteen Rabbit as a kid, but as an adult I understood this passage in a way I didn’t as a kid.
> “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
> “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
> “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
> “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
> “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
> “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
My oldest is 31 now but just reading this post reminded me of how he would always say “goodnight cream of wheat!” instead of the bowl full of mush. I love it
Captain underpants. (Via dogman) Dav Pilkey is a master craftsman
Hear me out
I am an avid reader. I grew up on animorphs, his dark materials, and redwall.
Captain underpants was after my time. My little brother liked it but it never hit for me. Fast forward like 20 years
My older son is voracious. He read like 45 books of the magic treehouse. I want to show him something that will give him an emotional experience similar to what I got from my favorite novels.
Enter – Dogman. I started reading it with my son and it’s edgy, zany, gross, up until about book 4. Dogman hits HARD emotionally past a certain point in the story, particularly the characters of Petey the cat and his son, Lil’ Petey
I know how this sounds.
I know what you’re thinking
You are incorrect.
Dogman hits visceral truths that most ADULT books don’t come anywhere close to. Trust me man. Dogman will be looked at as a masterpiece.
Anyway that made me revisit captain underpants as well and you know what? Dav Pilkey has always been an unflinching voice speaking truth about family, connection and community. He is a master of our time.
My daughter’s favourite was/is ‘There’s a Monster at the end of this Book’. It’s a Sesame Street Golden book.
You have to act it out which turns it from being scary to young children to being hysterically funny.
I was not a fan of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I vaguely recall being very bored by an alphabet book. Now, with my own 2-year-old, I’m totally hooked on the rhyme and tempo. It’s basically how we sing the ABCs.
I liked the Bearenstein (Berenstein? Mandela effect happening here?) Bears as a kid. I was recently gifted My Funny Valentine where this boy is mean and teases Sister Bear and then Mama Bear is like, “You know who used to treat me like garbage? Your dad – it turned out, he just liked me!” And then at the end, Sister Bear gives a special valentine to her bully and the boy gives her one and admits that he likes her.
Idk if all the books are like that, but that one went straight into the garbage.
Corduroy.
That bear is amazing.
One of my absolute favorite books as a child was The Monster at the End of This Book. It’s still a favorite, but we’ve added some discussion between page turning to try to deal with the total lack of listening to boundaries. “Grover, it’s okay. I know you’re scared. We’re going to turn the page and be brave about what’s at the end together. You ready?” Etc….