here's a Friday thought question

[flea]

What do you do about classics of children's literature that have, sometimes just incidentally, things that are racist, sexist, etc.? So far we've had to deal with this in Peter Pan (the book), which has disgustingly, to modern ears, "Ugh-How!" dialogue from the Indians. Looking ahead I see all kinds of pitfalls - "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" in the Little House books, Tintin in blackface, similar racist issues in Asterix, never mind the subtler but still problematic areas of race and class and gender in a lot of pre-1960s kids books.

Books that are both bad and racist tend no longer to be in print or available at libraries, but classics that have genuine good qualities are much tougher. Do you explain about history and people's ideas changing, and how much of that can a 5 year old take in? Assume they'll get the message from other sources in society and just let the book exist in its own universe? Sadly banish certain books from the reading list? I tried to on-the-fly tone down some of the Indian dialogue in Peter Pan (which caught me off-guard; I had either forgotten it was in the book as well as the Disney movie, or never read the book).

I mean, do I need to be worrying about class and the Sowerbys when I read Casper my beloved The Secret Garden?

What childrens' books can you think of that you love, but whose treatment of these issues doesn't stand up to scrutiny? Ideas for how to handle this?

Comments

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I will say that after reading Oyate on the Little House books, I won't read or suggest them to my kids. But we live in a city/province with a large First Nations population, so it's particularly important to me that we try to counteract the casual racism they're going to see around them.

Mostly, I'd say that talking about it instead of glossing it over is a good idea, at whatever level your kids are ready for.

[edited to correct my terms]