{"id":6290,"date":"2019-02-18T10:27:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T10:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6290"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:27:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T10:27:16","slug":"unsuitable-for-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6290","title":{"rendered":"Unsuitable for children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Tyger Voyage\/R. Adams and N. Bayley<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I spotted a wonderful Twitter stream the other day: #Bookillustrationoftheday<\/a>, where people had posted their favourite illustrations, mostly from children\u2019s books. I could have wasted hours scrolling through it, revisiting old friends and discovering new ones. Ever anxious to get damesnet<\/strong>\u2019s name before as many people as possible, I decided to post our own contribution, and looked through my collection of children\u2019s books to find a candidate. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfirst likely book I saw was a bumper Babar book: the anniversary album,\ncontaining six stories. Just the thing: I used to love Babar; I had fond\nmemories of pictures of elephant infants in sailor suits \u2013 what\u2019s not to like? But\nas I flicked through the pages to find a tweetable picture I was appalled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Babar\/Jean de Brunhoff<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The story line (in the first book at least) that I had taken completely at face value as a child now seemed completely unacceptable. True enough, Babar has the same back story as Bambi: a cruel hunter shoots his mother. Babar then runs away from the herd in terror and ends up in the big city, where a kind old lady takes him under her wing (no mean feat, when you are a little old lady and he is a five-ton elephant) and turns him into a gentleman, buying him exquisite clothes, a car, and paying for private tuition. But he feels homesick and returns to his home in his splendid De Dion Bouton. His fellow elephants\u2019 response? \u2018Why not choose Babar for king? He has learnt so much in the city.\u2019 And there you have it \u2013 the justification for going out and colonising countries where elephants live. The charm and the graphic skill of the illustrations (Maurice Sendak was a fan) notwithstanding, I moved on to look for something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy Pig\/Mollie Clarke<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How\nabout Happy Pig<\/em>? I wondered. Happy Pig<\/em> is the earliest book I\nremembered reading and having read to me. It\u2019s about that children\u2019s book stock\ncharacter, the piglet with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi<\/em>\nwho is spared the trip to the abattoir. Here Happy Pig honours the\ntender-hearted farmer\u2019s daughter who saved him by paying forward her kindness\nand helping out his fellow creatures of farm and forest whenever he can,\njollying them along with his uplifting refrain:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buttercups and daisies<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweet-smelling hay<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy little pig<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Singing all day<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An\nunimpeachable story \u2013 except what\u2019s this? Happy Pig comes across a sad black\nlamb (a helpful bit of phonics here). Why is the black lamb sad? (You clearly\ncan\u2019t have too much of this sort of thing.) Because the white lambs will not\nplay with her. Happy Pig\u2019s solution is \u2026 to find another black lamb for her to\nplay with! Whoah, there Happy Pig! You were supposed to go into the white lambs\u2019\nfield and kick ass, not promote woolly apartheid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end I went with one of Nicola Bayley\u2019s magical illustrations from The Tyger Voyage<\/em>, written by Richard Adams (at top). Number of likes 1, number of retweets 0. In the words of Samuel Beckett, \u2018No matter, try again; fail again, fail better.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Pig – stop promoting woolly apartheid!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,68,67,126,55,53],"tags":[188,189],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6290"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6322,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6290\/revisions\/6322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}