To not understand the appeal of Beatrix potter books.

[Organisedinacrisis]

I can remember really loving the Beatrix Potter books when I was a child. I really wanted the full boxed set of books but they were far too expensive ( seem the remember they were £90 at the time).

Fast forward twenty five years and my son was given the box set as a Christening present when he was born. He is now 4 and I have started to read them to him. They are terrible. The stories make no sense, the language is archaic and very hard to understand in places. My son does seem to be enjoying them but I honestly don't know why. The pictures are of course lovely, but surely thats not the only reason they are so popular?

Inspired my another thread going at the moment I think I am going to try and move away from Beatrix Potter and read my DS my old Enid Blyton books instead. Yes they are also quite dated in ways but at least they all make sense.

YANBU

Winnie the Pooh is the same. It's so frustrating to read and even dh gave up reading them to ds2 in spite of him waxing lyrical about them when I was pregnant.

Fast forward twenty five years and my son was given the box set as a Christening present when he was born. He is now 4 and I have started to read them to him. They are terrible. The stories make no sense, the language is archaic and very hard to understand in places.

Um, you said yourself you loved them as a kid. Then you re-read them as an adult and thought they were terrible.
It's because when you were reading them as a child, you were the target audience, the one it was written for, and therefore enjoyed it.
Then as an adult you're coming at it from an adult perspective!

I agree that the language used in the books really does widen vocabularly and the pictures are lovely. It is one of my deep, dark secrets that I actually found I really dislike or feel impassive about most of them. I feel I really ought to like them, but just don't. Thinking back, I wasn't bothered by them as a child either. My PIL offered to buy DD the boxed set from Book People or a piece of jewellery when she was baptised and I went for the books as more useful and enduring (plus I love books and have degrees in children's lit) but when we started reading them, I sort of wish I hadn't. She loves reading but never touches them.

The Tailor of Gloucester makes me cry. It's one of my favourite Christmas holiday books. I love Jeremy Fisher too, and the tale of two bad mice. The ballet version is brilliant - well worth a watch if you can find it.

Organised - the language is archaic

And they were written, um, HOW long ago?

We have the full set too. One of them is really long, and boring. I haven't a clue what's going on. I read them to dd1 and she fell asleep. She normally stays awake for stories, so it must have been a yawn fest.

Yanbu op.

We have a set and I have to admit I'm not a fan, I love the pictures but not the stories - I'm more of an Enid Blyton fan which I loved as a child and now when I read them with my children. Not a Winnie the Pooh fan either.

For anyone interested the full box set of BP books was on sale with the Book People for £30 a couple of weeks ago! Had been £25 before that when I bought it just before that!

I read Mr Tod to DD (4) a few nights ago (we have the box set too). Crikey it was hard going! The vocabulary is pretty advanced and I don't think she really understood half of it. She has talked about it quite a lot though.

My favourites as a child were Mrs Tiggywinkle, the Tailor of Gloucester and Samuel Whiskers.

As BP was born in the 19th century and donated 4000 acres of land to the National Trust, thereby ensuring most of us can enjoy the Lake District, I think you can forgive her some archaic language and twee-ness.

'I am affronted,' said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit - wish I could be as calm in the face of disastrously messy children when guests are arriving.

The Tale of Ginger and Pickles should be required reading anybody wanting to go in to business.

BP is writing in a very particular style and like every style it won't appeal to everybody. There's nothing wrong with not liking them. Personally I love them though.

Tom Kitten getting wrapped in pastry - what a hoot! Mumsnetters would blame Tabitha Twitchit though. She clearly wasn't keeping enough of an eye on her kittens......

I didn't like them as a child. I had no intention of reading them to my children but at some point all 3 have insisted on borrowing them from the library.

I understand the appeal of the pictures but they insist I read them then wander off half way through because they don't really want to listen

I agree with you OP, I don't get the appeal of a lot of children's "classics", I've had quite a few people tell me that these are a British childhood essential and I have tried, but there are so many great children's stories from around the world and across time to see much in these - they've dated quite badly I think.

I like most of them and the pictures are lovely. I struggle to read them aloud though.

I wouldn't call the language archaic. It's what? Edwardian? Late Victorian? It doesn't do things that we have come to expect of children's literature. The sentences are complex and the vocabularly relatively sophisticated. But not archaic.

I think children often find the world they live in so complex that a difficult book bothers them less than we might expect. They sort of get something about the books and what that something is is enough.

They aren't really books for toddlers. For older children I would say - and often we fall out of the habit of reading to those children. You have to read them in a slightly arch way. Or at least I do

YY to The Tale of Mr. Tod. It contains all the ingredients: snobbery, kidnap, abuse of the elderly, catsbum housekeeping and glorious eye watering hyperviolence.

Just So Stories didn't translate to adulthood well though as stories. There are some excellent lines in it: "rather warm and very much astonished", and little Taffimai Metallumai is a perfect depiction of the way a father sees a small girl.

Peter Rabbit scared me, and I remember finding his sisters really annoying and just little goody-two-shoes.

We do have a copy of the Tailor of Gloucester someone bought DD for her christening though, since thats where she was born .

My daughter LOVED these in nursery (I loved them too as a kid). Her favourite was Peter Rabbit. She knew it off by heart and would freak people out by pretending to read it fluently whenever she came across a copy, the little minx. Admittedly a lot of the stories are bloody awful, the Ginger & Pickles one was written as an inside joke about the shop in Beatrix Potter's village in the Lake District, and Mrs Tiggywinkle was an homage to the village washer-woman, which is why there's no story to them, but Shakespeare wrote a fair amount of crap as well remember.

Got to say I also love The Winnie The Pooh books. A A Milne was such a talented writer, his prose is really clever and original and I just love the characters (the Disneyfied Pooh makes me very sad, how could they get something so brilliant so horribley wrong)!