My toddler has terrible taste in books [lighthearted]

[UnlimitedChipsAndSalsa]

Come and rant about the books you hate to read to your toddler.

My worst offender at the moment is Peppa Goes to Playgroup. Terrible illustrations, meh storyline, hardly anything in the pictures to point at, and a huge percentage of the text is names. DD loves that book and has never even seen Peppa Pig (we got the book in a bundle of used books that I bought). We had to hide it for a while for our mental health, but I took pity on DD and put it back in the rotation.

Anyone else have an unreasonable hatred toward an innocent book?

OK probably going to offend a few people but... Winnie the pooh. The actual original stories are a load of meandering guff. Whimsical to read if you're an adult but pure shite for small kids.

I was planning to add We're Going on a Bear Hunt to our collection (thought it was a must-have classic), but I think I'm going to save myself the grief. Thanks, everyone!

Also, I don't think I needed to have "lighthearted" in the title. Your hilarious commentary makes it clear.

OK probably going to offend a few people but... Winnie the pooh. The actual original stories are a load of meandering guff. Whimsical to read if you're an adult but pure shite for small kids.
I used to nearly fall asleep reading it to the kids but once they stopped looking for it I really really missed it! We had a huge book of stories but haven't been able to find it since we moved house:(

@stayathomer

OK probably going to offend a few people but... Winnie the pooh. The actual original stories are a load of meandering guff. Whimsical to read if you're an adult but pure shite for small kids. I used to nearly fall asleep reading it to the kids but once they stopped looking for it I really really missed it! We had a huge book of stories but haven't been able to find it since we moved house:(

What's your address I'll send you mine 🤣

The Ladybird fairytales set - endless repetition, not a pronoun in sight, and some of them have the most hideous, low-rent illustrations I have ever seen. Despite this, my DC love them.

What's your address I'll send you mine 🤣
I feel like you have ulterior motives

Gosh yes, WHY is Mog so popular? Surely nobody likes them?
And then mog did a thing. It was a bad thing. She did it in a chair. It was a chair that belonged to Mr Thomas. She did a bad thing in Mr Thomas' chair. And on and on and on and on for every pointless ridiculous story!! Illustrations look like they were knocked out in 5 minutes, the characters don't even look the same from book to book. Plotlines are like something devised by a primary school child.
My mum bought us a whole series and my kids love them

She bought us an Alfie set at the same time which unlike a PP I quite like - I think the illustrations are nice and I find the prose quite soothing (definitely an element of nostalgia there). Although yes, the gender stereotypes are so bad at points it's almost funny. There's one where there is a massive leak in the ceiling from a burst pipe. Teenage babysitter calls her mum who comes over and flaps about with mops and buckets, all; 'oh dear oh dear it's ruining your mother's floor!' And only after a page or two of this nonsense does it occur to the teenager (not the grown adult woman!!!) that the best solution might be to switch of the water at the mains...which she has to call dad to do because of course only A Man would be capable of finding a tap

I like Judith Kerr's writing (don't really think it's repetitive at all) and her illustrations are very well-observed, but the sexism in the Mog books rankles with me - it's always Mrs Thomas running around cleaning and making cups of tea/pouring pints of beer for Mr Thomas (Mog's Bad Thing is the clearest example - incl the notion that Mr Thomas has his own chair). The proportions in the Tiger who Came to Tea when Daddy comes home go in that direction too - huge Daddy sitting in his chair and tiny Mummy standing next to it. I adore Katinka's Tail, though. Such a lovely gentle portrait of the old lady.

Thomas is a primer (or a whole series of them) for subjects of Victorian capitalism - work hard, be useful and revere the Big Boss, and wish for no more than a few words of praise now and again.

There's quite a bit of unreflecting sexism in Julia Donaldson too. The way all the animals in the Gruffalo are male (I always made the owl female). Tabby McTat - the male cat and son go on a quest while Socks stays waiting at home. Same thing in Stick Man (albeit the quest is involuntary).

The Ahlbergs are fantastic, but the Happy Families books have this annoying habit of trailing off in the middle of sentences ('Well, listen and I'll tell you... all about it.').

We're huge Dr Seuss fans. He very, very rarely drops rhyming or scansion clangers. I also love their humane spirit - Happy Birthday to You is lovely and gets read all year round. Other favourites are The Sleep Book, The Lorax and the Cat in the Hat/C in the G Comes Back. (which I am sure is one big reference to Freud's model of the self, with the Cat and the Things as the id and the mother (or perhaps the fish) as the superego).

The Pooh stories are, granted, various riffs on the same theme, but I like how the animals all have their distinct characters and the sometimes quite subtle ways they come out. The stories where they decide to drive out newcomers (Kanga/Tigger) and get their gentle comeuppances, but then everything is OK again and they all share their world henceforth, are instructive in really quite a lovely way.