Madonna Rant

April 2003

 

So. Those of us who fret about what our children read can breathe easier now: Madonna is about to bless us with her own tales conveying important life lessons.

We all know Madonna, she who fills our radio waves and our children’s ears with such deeply spiritual lyrics as: “Tell me love isn’t true, it’s just something that we do.”

Why does this self-appointed Mistress of Morality feel compelled to share her insights with our children? According to BBC News online, here’s what she recently told a VH-1 interviewer about the state of children’s books:

“I couldn't believe how vapid and vacant and empty all the stories were. There were like no lessons, just all about princesses and like the beautiful prince arrives and he takes her for his wife and nothing happens, no efforts are made. Nobody asks her what her opinion is, or I didn't see anybody struggling for things. There’s like no books about anything.”

Oh, dear. Her poor, deprived children.

Our Madonna must have shown up at her public library on a day when all the good children’s books — the ones the librarian no doubt recommended, when asked — were checked out. By parents who were able to recognize a good book.

She must have walked into her local independent bookstore -- where the sales staff certainly directed her to the shelf of Newbery Medal winners as well as their own lesser-known faves — right before a delivery, to find that only the literary dreck remained in stock. The stories about princesses whose opinions are never sought.

Well, Madonna dear, you haven’t been paying enough attention. There are like plenty of good children’s books about something.

Did you miss “Goodnight Moon,” Margaret Wise Brown’s classic that has soothed millions of children into bed with the quiet rhythms in its spare text? Or Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” in which a naughty boy journeys to a world of his own and returns to find that Mom’s love never wavers?

Oh, the children need lessons. That’s right. And you are basing your stories on a religious text.

I suggest you have a look at “When the Beginning Began,” in which Julius Lester, a scholar and master storyteller, ponders what lies between the lines in the book of Genesis. I guarantee, you’ll go back for more from this mesmerizing author.

In fact, Maddie — if I may be a bit familiar here — your most efficient route to good books for those Kinder of yours might be this: Follow the authors.

Consider the books of Dr. Seuss. “The Lorax” takes on environmental stewardship. “The Butter Battle Book” tackles the arms race. In a less political vein, “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose” examines the heartache of having guests who just won’t leave. Even “The Cat in the Hat” has a nice, empowering subversiveness to it.

How about Judy Blume? Her books deal with puberty, racism, sibling rivalry and all manner of other real-life childhood issues. Or E.L. Konigsburg: Start with her layered and lyrical Newbery winner “The View From Saturday” and go from there. Vapid? Vacant? Mm, don’t think so.

I could go on. Jacqueline Woodson, Cynthia Voigt, Virginia Hamilton, Chris Van Allsburg, Christopher Paul Curtis ... But I am absolutely sure your librarian or bookseller has already directed you to their books, when you asked. Right?

And if it’s a nobody’s-doormat princess you seek, check out “The King’s Equal” by Katherine Paterson. The beautiful Rosamund most definitely has opinions, and the arrogant king who wants to marry her had better take heed. This is another author you’ll want to keep coming back to.

Yes, Madonna, it seems you’ve missed a few hundred excellent children’s books. But listen, babe. Don’t feel dumb. It happens.

You’re not the first celebrity author to declare that you must write a children’s book because until you do, there will simply be nothing worthwhile out there. You’re following in the footsteps of such literary giants as Carly Simon, Bill Cosby, Jamie Lee Curtis, Will Smith and others too depressingly numerous to mention.

My vote for Title That Would Have Been Laughed Out of Any Beginning Writing Class has to go to Julie Andrews’ “Dumpy the Dump Truck.”

At least you’ve done better than that. Your first book, due out this fall, is to be called “The English Roses.” Heaven only knows what sort of title crossed your mind along the way -- “Horny the Hornet”?

Parents and children everywhere can hardly wait.

A personality test

September 2006

 

I was thinking about an old saying that goes something like this:

 

We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much with so little for so long, we are now able to do anything with nothing.

 

So here’s my question: Is this an upbeat saying or a downbeat saying?

 

I sampled two randomly chosen individuals (OK, they were my sons), and got two different answers. Hmmm…

 

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Some Thoughts on Thoreau

December 2006

 

I’ve been reading Henry David Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” first published in 1849 and now more commonly known as “Civil Disobedience.” I want to share some of my favorite passages.

 

The language is a bit pompous and wordy and Thoreau doesn’t seem to acknowledge the existence of women, but let’s get over that and think about the real substance of what he’s saying here. Mahatma Gandhi did, and Martin Luther King Jr. after him. Consider:

 

“The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. … Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the State chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil … as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.”

 

“[When] a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”

 

“Action from principle – the perception and the performance of right – changes things and relations. … It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”

 

“Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?”

 

“Why does [the government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?”

 

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