Censer? Sensor? Centsoar?
I read a story every day at the start of naptime. Usually it’s just one of the storybooks off the shelf, but every so often we read through a chapter book, a little bit each day over the course of some weeks. Charlotte’s Web and The Boxcar Children are some of my favorites. I’m big into being the Filter between young children and the big, bad world, so I’m pretty good at editing as I read. In Charlotte’s Web, I don’t talk about stupid Avery and his stupid gun. (Stupid Avery.) When reading fairy tales, I don’t say the evil witch wanted to ‘kill’ Snow White, she wanted to ‘get rid of her’. Yup, it’s all G-rated all the time in Mrs. Sommerer’s room.
Well, someone donated a bunch of books and one of them was Mary Poppins. “That’s a great naptime book!” I though to myself. I had already watched the movie Saving Mr. Banks, so I was prepared that the book was not going to be as Technicolor-musically as the Julie Andrews film.
What I was not prepared for is that it’s a pretty awful book. Mary Poppins is actually kind of a jerk. She is vain, super-stern, shows no love, and whenever a magical thing happens involving the children, she denies that it ever happened and scolds them for making things up. What? Oh, and there are some pretty racist bits, too. LOTS of editing-on-the-fly with this one. Whole sections skipped, actually.
Speaking of racist, that Five Chinese Brothers book? When my student teacher was here, she was teaching about Chinese New Year and brought out all the China-related books we had in our library. We decided against having this one out, though. In addition to being a bit racist, it was a bit violent – too much ‘evading death by trickery’ for my tastes.
‘Bye, books.