My kids are both voracious readers. Our house is mostly made up of books, and my kids have read nearly every one of them. I used to think that books published for children were fair game for my kids to read, as there was no possible way that I could keep up with what they read as they devour book after book. I was so very, very wrong.
My daughter read a few of the Guardians of Ga’hoole stories the last year she was in public school. I was so busy for much of that year, shuttering down my market research business to a maintenance level and preparing to homeschool. I had never considered homeschooling as a serious option as it was the realm of “crazy religious parents” and certainly did not fit with my progressive atheist upbringing. Over that year, I realized that all types of people homeschool for all types of reasons. Little was I to know that the longer I schooled my children, the more I realized the truth. Homeschooling leads you to the roots of our existence through a total focus on family and I was soon to join the hallowed ranks of the “crazy religious parents.”
And back to the Guardians of Ga’hoole stories. I never had time to read the book along with my daughter. I was distracted by preparing, reading, volunteering in my kids’ classrooms to attempt to mitigate the bullying both kids experienced. One bully was a kid who was angry at my son because my boy was identified publicly by his teacher as the smartest in the class (a shortsighted move on her part that did no favors to either boy) and one bully was my daughter’s teacher who is quite possibly the meanest woman I have ever met. And then there were the children devoid of any understanding of morality who routinely stole my childrens’ lunches and books and clothing. And so I never read the Guardians of Ga’hoole books. Perhaps if I had I might have understood why there are so many children in public schools today without a moral compass.
The Guardians of Ga’hoole movie was released and when our family watched it together it struck me as a wonderful, almost Narnian tale, strongly routed in Christian principles. And then my daugther explained that not only did the movie not follow the books very well, but the books were filled with twisted plots of evil. As my daughter explained, “Kludd has to go through an initiation ceremony to join the pure ones that includes killing one of his family members.” What? Wait a minute! Even in the days before I realized I was actually the crazy constitutional conservative christian black sheep of my family, the concept of fratricide as an initiation rite is not something I wanted in my 6 year old’s head. I realize that Cain and Abel may be the first story of fratricide, but Cain’s story is one of teaching about morality and God. That is absolutely not how the Guardians of Ga’hoole comes across.
Once again I find I have been deceived by books marketed as children’s stories. From Guardians of Ga’hoole to Hunger Games and The Golden Compass stories, modern children’s fiction is largely devoid of moral structure and so many parents assume that books you find in the juvenile section of the library or bookstore must be safe. Not so, regardless of your political viewpoints.
I have decided that either I must read books before my children can look at them, or we must choose from literature written in the days before the progressive movement got a hold on education. It turns out that there are many, many excellent books written for children before 1920 or so. And the good thing is that almost all of them are available at no cost as ebook downloads or at low cost in used bookstores. Enough to keep my kids busy for a long, long time.
And now my daughter has a new mission: to convince our local library to move the Guardians of Ga’hoole books into the teen section.
