Books For the Inner Child

With some kids lit or entertainment there is the unique pleasure of the wry wink to the adults. Something about rabbits being good at multiplication in Zootopia, a sight gag that pays homage to the Godfather trilogy or a wry, sly pun that lets the reader know that the author knows who actually has to read the book. Perhaps one of those elements lies dormant in a child's memory or imagination like a buried treasure awaiting maturity for revelation.

I have, however, come across children's books that leave me wondering if a child needs the message or moral of a story.  Maybe it is a little early for a child to think seriously about the place you will actually go as Dr. Seuss described them and as my Philosophy of Education professor read to the class at the end of our year with him. He was, with Oh, The Places You Will Go, an early adopter, one who had identified adults' needs for that particular message and shared that with my classmates and I in 1990 without any trace of irony or the weariness that might have followed 10 or 15 years later when it was, like many aptly-written stories or lines, unfairly rendered cliche.

With the exception of the countless variations on stories of fire trucks at work and similar tales, there are stories with clear messages in them that are both a pleasure to pass down as they are to share. Whether it is the criticism of tyranny in Seuss' Yertle the Turtle (to name only one of his) to the more recent description of the boundless and growing unconditional love Nick Bland describes in The Runaway Hug or the timelessness of friendship in Marianne Dubuc's buried treasure of The Lion and the Bird, those theme-rich children's stories thrill me when they come down from the shelf.

There are other stories that make me wonder if a child actually needs to hear them. Or, to be more specific, whether my four-year-old needs to hear them yet. The first story that comes to mind is The Little Prince, which -- length aside -- might simply prompt a child to say, "Well, of course" at each of the passages from the book the adults hold onto like talismans or mantras to navigates them through the baffling rationalizations and foibles adults find themselves prone to.

Beyond that classic, there are other stories that I have come across that baldly express to adults something that we need to hear. Koji Yamada's What Do You Do With An Idea is the compact and beautiful complement to the numerous weighty tomes on creativity that have emerged like April dandelions in the last few years. It foregoes the theory, the psychological research, priming exercises and reflective practices that so many adult-oriented creativity books contain in favour of an extended poem about the life span of an idea. Yamada points out all the stages along the way from the nascent discovery of a thought to changing the world in a matter that one can memorize over time. This is not to say that a child would not get it - just that they are more likely to think, "Well, of course."

In his book The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim talks about the distinction between the conscious, subconscious and the preconscious, saying that it is intrusive to make our preconscious thoughts conscious. Stories can help us ensure those preconscious aspects of our character or our interpretation of the world are reinforced and perhaps ensure a child that it is okay to believe certain things that might be drawn into doubt at times that would make even a four-year-old ask, (as he has), "What is this world coming to?!"

For adults, getting lost and reassured in a lesson on creativity, the whimsy of a desert-stranded pilot's reflections or hallucinations on adulthood and mortality or a mantra that assures you of what makes a family a family seem better suited for adults in need of the courage or evidence to believe in certain possibilities at a time where the safest place in the world is in a bedtime fortress of pillows and blankets burrowing into an illustrated truth delivered from a wise, succinct storyteller.