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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Some Flickers of Interest

The weather in New York and, I presume, most of the East Coast, has been so appalling that it has all but destroyed civilized conversation in town. All you can do is apologize for being so incredibly disgusting whenever you get someplace and by the time you stop excusing the obvious reason for your sweaty self, the heat has pulverized all the interesting thoughts and observations you had going for you.

Even errands are proving tricky. On Tuesday I went to a store and left my umbrella behind. No worries, I called the shop and they held it for me. Wednesday I went in before retrieving Felix at school and proudly picked it up, triumphant in not having lost yet another one. Then I promptly left it at the school. By some miracle it was still there today. I really didn't deserve to find it a second day in a row.

Anyway, Slate has an interesting slide show piece about beginning reader books and movie tie-ins. This might be a little before the fact because Felix is not learning to read (unless he is doing it on the Q.T., which is not impossible, there is a lot I don't know about his life, for instance, he only just told me that he made the acquaintance of a chinchilla in the winter). But Felix does like long story sessions and he adores a lot of the series mentioned in the article: Frog and Toad, Mouse Tales, Frances stories, things like No Fighting No Biting, and Little Bear. He and I also both love doing dramatic readings of the Mo Willems Elephant and Piggy stories (that the New York Times sniffed at).

What I won't be doing is getting him the movie tie-in books at this reading level because, since he isn't reading them for himself, I want to save myself the torture of reading them. At a party he was given an early reader book based on Finding Nemo, and not only does it completely eradicate all of the charm and humor from the movies script and animation, it is grammatically incorrect and makes no sense as a story.

I don't really care that these books exist, but I sort of wonder why they do. Felix won't sit through movies anyway and most of the tie-ins that were mentioned are for movies that have PG-13 ratings and above, implying at least a little, that he's supposed to be too young for them. If the idea is that he will want to read (or "read") something he's familiar with, why is it assumed that little kids are going to these movies that are branded as being too old for them? (This is not a statement against people letting their preschoolers see PG-13 movies. I've always been quite fascinated with ratings and censorship and don't really think these systems work so well anyway.) If you're looking for stories, though, there are a host of suggestions in the article.

And then, my husband sent me an article that appeared in the Guardian UK for which the headline read: Parents lose custody of girl for naming her Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii.

The case came up in New Zealand and the child in question is nine years-old and has already selected a new name for herself. I wonder which direction she chose. If she were from the United States would she have really looked to blend in and call herself Ashley or Emily or Emma or Olivia or Sophia or Madison? Or would she have sought out something less trendy but still ultra-normal like Mary or Sarah?

And why would it be appealing to have a kid and give it a joke name? There are a lot of really dopey ones enumerated in the article if you're curious. It seems to be putting the child on the "pet" continuum, and assume that the kid is never going to have to explain endlessly where the bad idea for his or her name came from or be patient as every stranger, upon being introduced, makes the same wisecrack as if it had never been spoken before.

So maybe the article is worth saving if only to dust it off for one's own children (or even pets) when they come to you and tell you that they hate their names. It will be a good lesson in "it could always be worse."

posted by Elise at 12:28 PM

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2 Comments:

Laura K. Curtis said...

I wonder if the movie tie-ins are meant to appeal to little kids whose older siblings are talking about the PG-13 movies? It's the only reason I can think of to produce such a thing.

7/25/2008 12:29 PM

Lady D said...

I think the movie tie-ins are meant to appeal to the kids regardless of their age. They know that alot of parents don't look at the ratings anymore (I don't) and they are just hoping to get fans. I know, for my kids, if I question a movie, then I go to see it first. But I'm also fairly lax about the movies they watch as long as I am there to explain things to them. I find that it opens up good conversations.

8/11/2008 10:10 AM

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