Skip to main content

Give Your Kids Good Stories


by Wes Callihan, (Antithesis, July/August 1991, p. 3)

Do you enjoy what you read to your children?

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and far more) worth reading at the age of fifty.” If C.S. Lewis was right about this, then a good test of the quality of a given “children’s” book should be whether or not adults can (not whether they do) enjoy it as well. To put it another way, if it is only a children’s book, it is probably not a good children’s book.

He’s right, of course. Consider those books that are called children’s classics. Peter Rabbit is considered a classic. So is Winnie the Pooh. So are many fairy tales, and so also (though for different reasons) are the Little House books. Children love these stories—but the same is true of the adults who read them to the children. Something in them goes deeply enough into a person to obviate the question of age. A child may be delighted in a story in different ways than the adult who is reading the same story, but it would be surprising if those elements of poetry and romance (yes, Beatrix Potter!) that delight the adult did not also delight the child, not because of some remnant of the child in the adult, but rather because of the human in both.

On the other hand, there is a class of books written specifically for young people which is nearly impossible for adults to enjoy. Nor should it be said that we shouldn’t try to enjoy them because they are written for young people. That would be a great mistake. These are the teen series of pulp or school book club variety wherein some teenager “learns about life” through an adventure (in boy’s books) or a relationship (in girl’s books). In these books, most of the elements that make the children’s books so delightful are lost. The supernatural, the world of faerie, talking animals—all are gone. Some might respond, “All good riddance, too! Escapism is alright for children, but young people need to learn about the real world.” This response shows how badly literary fantasy and the purpose of stories in general is misunderstood—and what assumptions lurk behind such a remark about “reality”?

Something else is gone, too. In the best books, children are taken seriously as people—young, yes, but people nonetheless. In the other kind, they are talked down to in the attempt to give them “their own literature.” If they have their own, and we have ours, how will they make the transition? How do children’s minds become adult minds? What is the essential difference between the best children’s books and the best adult books? It is not a difference of kind.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ripe for Harvest: Prepared to Give an Answer

As you read through the book of Acts, look at every conversion, and see what happened right before it: what was said, who said it. The situations are the same today.     A long time ago, my duty in the Officer’s Christian Fellowship was the east coast of the United States. I went to an officer’s office at Fort Lee, VA, and stayed overnight, then I went on to Norfolk and Fort Bragg.    Forty years later, I was no longer on the staff of OCF, but I had to go to Denver. While I was in Denver, I checked in at the OCF offices. There was the same Air Force officer I had met in Fort Lee, retired now, a colonel. I had stayed in his house when he was a first lieutenant. He asked me, “Do you know what happened when you stayed overnight?” I said, “No, I just remember staying in your home.” He said, “You led the next-door neighbor to Christ.” I had no memory of it.    Ten years after that, I was speaking at a banquet at the Hotel Salisbury, and who was th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Is Obedience So Hard?

There are several reasons why obedience seems hard. I will comment on some of them and then speak positively on how obedience is easy. We think: 1) Obedience is an infringement on freedom. Since we are free in Christ, and obedience is somehow contrary to that freedom, we conclude that obedience is not good. Yet we know it is good. Thus, we become confused about obedience and are not single-minded. 2) Obedience is works. We who have been justified by grace through faith are opposed to works; therefore, we are opposed to obedience. 3) We have tried to obey and have failed—frequently. Therefore, the only solution is to disobey and later confess to receive forgiveness. It is easier to be forgiven by grace than to obey by effort. 4) We confuse obedience to men with obedience to God. Although these are sometimes one and the same (see Romans 13, 1 Peter 2-3, Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 2), sometimes they are not the same (see Colossians 2:20-23, Mark 7, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, a...
7 comments
Read more

Biblical Love (Part 1)

God tells husbands to love their wives. How are we to do that, and what does that love look like? Love Her as Your Neighbor “Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself”’” (Matt. 22:37-39). “Yourself” is someone you already greatly love, and therefore is a good standard for how to love someone else. For a start, calculate how much time you spend thinking about yourself on an average day. Second, list all the things you do for yourself, including bathing, eating, sleeping, and studying. Third, admit that these things are expressions of love for yourself. Fourth, admit that you do not love your neighbor (even your best friend) this much. Fifth, admit that that is a violation of God’s command and needs His forgiveness. Turn to Him for forgiveness. This will not make you loving, but it will make you clean . From that posi...
Post a Comment
Read more