A List of Good Children's Books...or Not
The sad state of juvenile literature in the United States
A friend recently asked me for recommendations of good children’s books. I have a master’s degree in elementary education and held a K-8 general education teaching certificate for 35 years, I ran a book-and-gift shop for 4 years, and I have had two children’s books published by commercial publishers. But answering my friend’s question was not easy.
Back in 1992, in preparation for teaching the children’s writing section of a one-week writing workshop, I read tens of current children’s books and probably hundreds of book reviews. I was sickened by what I found.
The vast majority of children’s books were negative. Dystopian fantasy and horror were prevalent, neither of which I think are appropriate for children (including teens) who are developing their concept of the world. Contemporary novels were almost universally about seriously dysfunctional families. The message was impossible to avoid: life sucks and then you die.
The prevailing philosophy among reviewers (editors, professors, librarians, and other writers) was that poor children would read more if they read about children like themselves.
Intellectual elites—the people who make editorial decisions about what books will be published, as well as those who publish the “important” reviews—have themselves little experience with lives different from their own. They impose their imaginations on society, projecting what they think they would want and feel.[i]
Then they decide, for example, that reading about children with dreadful lives is good for children. Why would a child stuck in a dysfunctional family want to read about another child stuck in another dysfunctional family, especially when that depiction is based on the imagination of a person whose only experience of deprivation is a camping trip, and to whom hunger is fasting on the fad diet of the week.
That child wants—needs—to read upbeat books that provide a roadmap for getting out of a bad situation. If the protagonist and/or mentor figure in the book is from their socio-economic or racial group, so much the better. But I cannot see how reading about a hopeless situation inspires a child to succeed, and the constantly falling reading test scores suggests I am correct.
What kept me sane in spite of familial dysfunction were books like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden and A Little Princess. At the age of 12, before barging into the office of the head of the music school I attended on Saturdays, I thought of The Secret Garden’s Mary going into her gruff and unfriendly uncle’s office and asking for what she needed: if she could, so could I. On that thought I marched into the office and asked for a different piano teacher. When the school head said my parents needed to contact him, I said that for three and a half years I had complained about Mrs. P. and they had done nothing. I was either going to get a new teacher or quit music lessons. I was given a wonderful teacher and made remarkable progress in the few months I studied with him before we moved away.
In A Little Princess, Sara Carew pretended to be a princess in order to rise above her situation. Sara taught me to ignore my reality and succeed in spite of the constant negative messages rained down on me.
A generation of boys learned from the Hardy Boys and other series of the early 20th century that with hard work, a cheerful demeanor, and determination they could rise above the immigrant poverty into which they had been born. Many of them became successful entrepreneurs and businessmen.
Recent children’s and young adult novels, with their dystopian and negative focus, and today’s books filled with graphic sex for even the youngest readers, provide the opposite lessons for children.
Every hot leftist topic finds its way into children’s books. Outside of the sexually explicit books that have received a lot of exposure recently, the worst example I know was first published in 1992 and is still in print. The Primrose Way, set in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1630’s, is an indictment of the early settlers of the United States and a paeon to Native American culture. In this incredibly unhistorical novel the protagonist comes to hate her society. I still remember how she especially hated the way the women of Salem Colony spent afternoons drinking tea and gossiping. Between spinning, weaving, knitting, darning the socks they knitted the previous month, gardening, making soap, washing laundry over a fire, butchering chickens, and so forth, women had very little time to sit around at nasty gossip sessions.
The protagonist of this novel is desperate for a meaningful life. The author clearly considers providing food and clothing to be a meaningless task even to a family in a world where these things could not be purchased. This travesty misrepresents history and women’s contribution to survival, yet it has been on schools’ recommended reading lists for over three decades.
In much of girls’ fiction published since about 1980, it is easy to identify the villain: she’s the one in skirts who bakes cookies, while the heroine and her friends do sports, climb trees, and disdain all traditional female skills.
Nonfiction books are no better. Each new “hot topic” generates a flood of nonfiction. There are tens of books on the demise of the rain forest, global warming, trash in the oceans, transgenderism, the LGBTQ+ lifestyle and so forth. Other topics are simply ignored. When I was writing for Career World, a magazine primarily for high school libraries and guidance counselors, I discovered a lot of careers in which people with ADHD excelled. I wanted to compile my articles into a book I tentatively called, Careers for People who Can’t Sit Still. No publisher was interested.
My friend’s question still needs an answer: what are some good books for today’s children? I cannot give a list, but here are suggestions to create your own.
First, look for books published before 1970. Authors like Hodgson Burnett, writing at the turn of the previous century, are great. Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others wrote exciting books both boys and girls can enjoy.
Second, if you read book reviews by Kirkus Review, Horn Book, or School Library Journal, look for the books that they criticize the most; they are most likely to have traditional values. Avoid books they recommend as well as those awarded the best-known literary prizes; they are almost always politically correct.
Instead, check out reviews of children’s books in Christian and conservative publications, including on-line ones.
If you can, shop at a Christian book shop. I recommend buying paperbacks from a variety of Christian publishers to find the publisher(s) that you find most suitable. Some publishers prefer books with a strong evangelical message while in others values are threaded into the books subtly. Some publishers are concerned with literary value as much as religious content. First-rate authors whose works are rejected from mainstream publishers because of conservative values and positive, even uplifting messages, find their homes with these publishers.[ii]
Once you have found a publisher or publishers whose values and tone align with yours, stick with those companies.
There are a few authors published by mainstream publishers today whose books provide healthy messages, but they are difficult to find. If you ask your children’s librarian for recommendations, read those books yourself. You will quickly discover whether the librarian is a source you can trust.
I have not kept up with the secular American children’s book market in a number of years, so I cannot give recommendations of titles. I hope that this essay has provided insight into the state of the book market as well as suggestions of how to find better books. Let me know your thoughts.
[i] My experience with members of the elite, upper-middle-class comes from relatives who lived in one of the most expensive, elite communities in the United States and many years living in the Boston area, which has a high concentration of elite colleges and universities. Wealthy men I met as a child were self-made on the Hardy Boys model. Their indulged children, however, were incredibly obnoxious when they were young. People I knew as young adults from that background were incredibly provincial, in spite of being well-traveled, and are very successful today. They and their children are the ones doing so much damage now.
Many of these elite, upper-middle-class “leaders” are overeducated liberals who think that people who struggle with survival need things handed to them. Raised in upper-middle-class families, they do not know any working-class people who have strong families and spend their time volunteering for their communities and churches in addition to working long hours to pay the bills. They have never done hard physical work for what they want, and they themselves have been given every thing they need, except purpose. They create purpose by trying to fulfill the needs of others when in fact they have no idea what those others need. Their only frame of reference for meaning is having more, newer, or better than someone else.
They do not realize that their focus on “social justice” is a symptom of them searching for meaning, so they do not understand that the people they most want to help need above all to feel useful and capable, the two feelings that lead to healthy self-images and the ability to have a truly meaningful life. They refuse to believe that giving everything to these people hurts, rather than helps, because it denies them the chance to feel useful and capable.
Because of these factors, and others not included here, these people are singularly unequipped to decide what all children should be reading, but because of their wealthy and elite backgrounds are the ones with the power to do so.
[ii] I also recommend that parents read at least the first three chapters of every book that their child brings home from school. If you don’t like the tone, nix the book. If such a book is assigned to your child, read the whole book and, after your child has read it, discuss it with the child, explain your concerns, and let the child voice his or hers. In this way you can teach your child how to evaluate books themselves and help them find the words to express their thoughts, even when these are opposed to what teachers say or present as “correct answers.”
Parents doing this must stop focusing on student grades. Those who teach their children to say what she or he believes in today’s schools must be prepared for lower grades. But since the value of high grades is to permit access to elite universities, and since elite universities today are progressive indoctrination centers, this should no longer be a concern.