Insipid kid lit

One of the many pleasures of having kids is reading them your fave kid books. Another is exploring other kid books you never managed to read. I'm biased toward Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, and that sort of "little chick lit", but I'm also trying to be fair to my 5-yr-old son "Huckle". So we're reading through the first book of the Sugar Creek Gang series, which was written in the 1940s and is boy adventure books with a big dose of Bible. A really big dose. I like the adventure and have always been partial toward mysteries, but the many paragraphs about obeying Mom and Dad and loving to go to church are nauseating, even to a Christian. The books were definitely written in a less subtle era. And it's also interesting to think about the stereotypes that were perhaps socially acceptable at the time: the parents who aren't Christians are also bad parents (and the Dad is an alcoholic). And, while the boys are so good at loving church and obeying their parents, they are downright mean in their teasing of the little fat boy, probably included to make the characters more fun and realistic. Not cool among today's Christians or today's culture in general.

In a hurry?

Have I talked up heaven too much to my 5-yr-old son? Over Christmas break, he kept sighing and saying, "Earth is sooo boring."