Double standards for picture books

• Siobhan O'Brien Holmes
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This morning I was reading through the archives of Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett’s awesome Substack newsletter, Looking at Picture Books, and came across a really interesting question they were asked by a reader: why do parents police picture books so heavily and freak out if the story is too dark or scary, but they’ll happily let them play violent video games or watch frightening TV shows?

It’s an excellent point. Personally, I don’t police my son’s books. If we read something together that doesn’t gel with my own world view, I’ll discuss it with him and explain where I’m coming from, but I never stop him picking up whatever book he wants to read. (I do gently discourage David Walliams, of course, but that’s about it.)

But lots of adults do worry about books being too scary for children; I saw it for myself when I worked at my son’s school library and staff were gatekeeping what the kids could take home.

Klassen and Barnett reckon it’s partly a misplaced reverence some parents put on picture books. They’re supposed to be special, magical, innocent, and anything dark or unsettling warps that image. There’s also the fact that the parents have to actually read the picture books out loud to their children so they’re interacting with the words much more than if the child was just watching television or playing a video game.

Some parents, Klassen and Barnett think, worry that by reading a book aloud they’re somehow endorsing it, and so they’re much more invested in the content than if they just stuck a film on the TV and left the child to it.

Whatever the reason, Klassen and Barnett agree that it’s dangerous to censor the picture books we allow our children access to because they deserve to see the real world, warts and all, reflected in the pages they read.

It’s a lot easier to keep the hard stuff out of your kids’ books than it is to keep it out of their lives. But when you do that, you create a distorted literature — a world of books much sunnier than the lives of the kids who read them.

And that’s not just an artistic failure. It’s alienating for kids, who expect (and deserve) to see their whole emotional lives reflected in their picture books. And so those kids will seek out other artworks that better reflect their experiences and feelings.

For me, picture books are the best place for scary or dark stories and concepts because we’re right there reading with them. We can hold their hands, tell them everything’s going to be alright, and explore the ideas together. If they’re scared or have questions, we’re right next to them. That’s not (always) the same with video games and scary films.