DADDY DAY CARE: And now for something completely different A few weeks ago I posted a series of stories about my adventures taking care of my daughter, Olivia. I haven’t had much new to say recently as things as have become considerably easier each week. It only took me four months to surmise what any new mother figures out the first day: feed them, change them and let them sleep. It’s not rocket science. But that doesn’t mean fatherhood isn’t a strange journey filled with odd adventures and unique observations. I wanted to spend a bit ruminating on one of those weird new things in my life: Children’s Books. I used to think that any old idiot could write a children’s book. That is horribly wrong. It takes a special kind of idiot, one is who challenged to write a straight-forward narrative, but who likes using colorful pictures and first grade sentence structure to express thinly veiled critiques on life. A few observations from a couple of my daughter’s books: THE RUNAWAY BUNNY: Ostensibly a story about a child’s curiosity and a mother’s love, this one has lots of unique subtext. The bunny spends the book devising multiple scenarios to escape his home, each being more complicated and convoluted than the one before. Why is he trying so hard to leave? Is this an abusive household? Where is the father bunny? Is anyone concerned with the child’s safety at all? By the end we learn that it doesn’t matter how hard you try to do anything, you’ll fail and have to run home to your mother. Also, this one gets bonus points for the illustrator’s depiction of the mother disguising herself to foil the child’s escape plans. Most of the time the “disguise” is just a stupid hat. THE BEST NEST: A story that shows us that home is where we make it. Written in the 1950s, the author is clearly a frustrated suburban husband with passive aggressive tendencies. Mrs. Bird is portrayed as erratic, dreaming of larger, more opulent nests that they probably can’t afford on a middle class bird income. Mr. Bird, by contrast, is a hardworking provider, obviously confused as to why Mrs. Bird would want to leave the modest, yet appropriate nest they already have. After more than 50 pages of catering to Mrs. Bird’s flip-flopping (Does she want a bigger nest or smaller nest? Views?) and a near-death experience, Mrs. Bird decides that, oh year, the old house was fine. Well, duh. There’s also the revelation that (SPOILER ALERT) Mrs. Bird is pregnant. At least that explains the erratic behavior. DUCK IN A TRUCK: It’s a story about a duck stuck in the mud. It includes lots of colorful pictures and funny sounds. This one is crazy. In the opening pages we are introduced to the Duck. We see him driving his car erratically. He’s not wearing a seat belt. He’s on the wrong side of the road. He has a vanity license place that reads “DUCK1” and he’s replaced the hood ornament with a platinum-encased duck. He’s a certifiable, Grade-A asshole. What happens? He crashes the truck and gets stuck in the mud. Since he doesn’t have AAA like any normal person, he has to rely on the kindness of the locals to help get him out. They do, and the duck repays them by peeling out of town and leaving them all stuck in the mud. I think about this one at night. I can’t help but wonder if it’s an allegory about the bank bailout of 2008. Does the duck represent the 2 percent? Are the locals the hard-working middle class that props up society, only to be left overworked and under recognized? Maybe. Or it could be about a duck.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 19:57:49 +0000
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