Inappropriate book for school??

[pinheadlarry]

Dd (5) teacher gives a book to take home every week
This weeks book was a little disturbing ..

I was reading it , got to the end and my heart skipped a beat

I Dont know if im being dramatic or not, I just blinked and closed the book and dd wasnt paying attention anyway so i dont think she noticed the ending ..

Mr wolf and the 3 bears by Jan Fearnley?

The book starts out normal with Mr wolf and grandma planning a birthday for baby bear
They bake cakes and sandwiches, clean the house the whole shabang

And then..Goldilocks gatecrashes the party eats all the food, ruins pass the parcel and is being rude to everyone

Grandma "smiled and got to her feet slowly" and suggests a game of hide and seek

She "takes a long time" to find everyone and finds everyone except goldilocks??

Everyone is saying how rude goldilocks is for leaving the party

Grandma says never mind and then she says "ive got a surprise"
She goes in to the kitchen and comes back carrying this gigantic GOLDEN pie , where the crust resembles goldilocks curly golden locks..

Mr Wolf says lets gobble it whilst its still hot and Grandma replies
"Not just yet, i think this is a dish best served cold"

As they wait for the pie to cool Grandma wolfs giggling to herself in the background like a psycho
And says " save me a big peice, a very big peice im starving "

On the last page theres recipes from the party and one of them is "grandmas golden pie"
Its giving normal instructions to make and roll the dough and "add filling of your choice"

Beneath that it has a list of grandmas special ingredients
.including things like
cheese and onion
Cayenne pepper
And it says "one naughty girl"
And "one bothersome boy"
Next to it says "oh grandma you dont mean it do you? Do you???"

Keeping in mind nobody wanted goldilocks at the party but grandma wolf insisted that she comes in ..

AIBU to think that they shouldnt be giving out books like that in yr 1?
Its just abit much i think, imagining grandma wolf chopping up goldilocks and stuffing her into a pie .. geesh

Thank you! This was my point exactly

@pinheadlarry Enjoy! 😁 There is also a third, Mr Wolf and the Enormous Turnip - not as gruesome but a great ending.

From my memory they werent so descriptive about the gruesome bits .. they didnt linger on it, just sort of said it and moved on

There are many different versions of these stories, you can only speak for the edition you read. Plus the effects of time on
memorial. I doubt the book you're talking about is a patch on the classic stories for gruesomeness.

I agree. You can't always predict how children will react to a book. A story that's fine for 99% of children may not be suitable for your child. But that doesn't it's inappropriate or that others should be prevented from reading it.

Op the value of that book is inference, it doesn’t say that the grandma puts Goldilocks into a pie but you infer it. Some children with autism really struggle with this - I have one who does - so I think it’s good you think about this early. If I had known how important it would be from years 4 onwards I would’ve sought out these kinds of books when dd was year 1.

Agree with everything you said

but (as seems to be very common on MN) the OP didn’t mention the autism until about 50 posts in. It amazes me quite how often that happens on threads.

The question she posed was about general suitability of the book, not the specific challenges an autistic child might have with inference and an ambiguous ending.

😂

Oddly as I started reading through this thread I started singing "Three Blind Mice" to myself.

I maintain YABU, even in view of the MASSIVE drip feed.

But sudocrem inference is a valuable skill for all children to learn. Some kids with autism don’t find it a problem - my other autistic daughter doesn’t - and some children without autism struggle with it! I’m just explaining why the book is useful at a young age.

When my dc were little we had a book called 'Good Little Wolf', which has a brilliant ending. Dh and I both burst out laughing when we turned the last page!

My kids LOVED The Hairy Toe !!!

It's about how you read it to them!!!

And I found The Tinder Girl by Hans Christian Andersen much more upsetting. A homeless girl selling matches in Victorian times dies. I remember dd2 reading that and nearly crying myself. Surely more upsetting that a story about a party with wolves that would never happen and an likeable character being eaten?

My DD would have found that scary and it would have given her nightmares. But she scares easily. Even paw patrol gives her nightmares. Most fairy tales are.pretry gruesome but I find the sexism and the values they show worse so tend to not read them with DD or have long discussions about the choices people make in them. I loved them as a child but now I'm not a fan.

So anyway I wouldn't have been thrilled for her to bring that book home but most kids would be fine with it and you could have a discussion about how to behave properly (and about reasonable consequences. If you are misbehaving at a party and the host tries to cook you as a punishment that's definitely not fine and you should always tell your parents!! )

Does anyone else feel disturbed by the idea of having hair as crust on your pie??

That is a really good point i didnt think of..

Does anyone else feel disturbed by the idea of having hair as crust on your pie??

My DD, 4 , has been watching nature documentaries and among her responses to seeing animals hunt and the carcass being eaten is to ask what parts they don't eat.

So while we as adults may be disturbed it won't register with most children.

Yes. It’s an incredibly important skill. I totally agree.

And obviously autistic people will vary in their inferential abilities (just as everyone else does). It is still true that a drip feed about autism and the child struggling with inferring from a story like this changes the nature of the question though.

And it is also just true that it is simply remarkable how many OP’s remember that their child has a neurodevelopmental condition that completely changes the question and renders the emerging conclusion of unreasonableness unfair midway through a thread on MN.

The picture of the pie was the most disturbing part for me , looked like shed been scalped 😂

Oh I see. Thanks for the picture. It's more the thought of having hair in my food that creeps me out. I can sleep more easily now.😁

Sounds hilarious!

🙄i didnt mention it because i thought it was irrelevant
My main point was that the book was inappropriate for yr 1 kids period
It was only after i woke up and read the replies that i thought to mention it because i had a personal grievance about how my dd reacts to these sort of topics regarding of the autism
And its good because i wanted the opinion of people with autistic kids too
And all these different opinions have taught me something today so no regrets..

I concur, OP. This sort of book gives children a false sense of security. It's rare that cannibals would base their consunption habits on whether a potential meal had been rude or naughty; that feels like a transparent attempt to influence behaviour and coerce conformity to a particular social narrative. In reality, the cannibal would only consider the size, freshness, and physical condition of the individual, and perhaps the type of diet upon which s/he had been raised, presence of hormones, cruelty-free/free-range habitat, etc.

The pie doesn’t look like she’s been scalped. It looks like there are moustache details around the edge of the pastry.

Isn't it just a new take/twist on Little Red Riding Hood crossed with Goldilocks & the Three Bears - both of which young children have been reading for decades without incident?

When I was a TA in reception this was the most chosen book!