Mike S. (mikesmith) reviewed on 12/30/2009 + 50 more book reviews

I'm hesitant to even post this book, given to my kids by a relative who is disconcerted that I'm not indoctrinating them with the value of just believing what people tell them without questioning BECAUSE IT JUST FEELS RIGHT, JUST BELIEVE IT, DON'T THINK, TRUST YOUR HEART, but I'd like to trade it for a kids book that teaches them something actually positive, about kindness, or love, or a sense of wonder.

Books that emphasize faith and belief and trusting one's heart over one's mind are as subversive and dangerous and children's books can get, and I want no part of them. We already have people living life and making laws and voting based on nothing but how they feel about the minute amount of information they've bothered to acquire, and we don't need more like that. Children are amazing blank slates, hungry to learn, to seek real truth, and adults just pile on their set dogmas, their idiocy, their religious beliefs, their low-information political ideologies, and it's a huge disservice to the kids.

Well, forget it: I want my kids to believe in the goodness of others and to have artistic vision, sure, but I certainly don't want a lesson of faith delivered to them in a box made of god, from a Mormon author who thinks faith trumps reason. If faith trumps reason, when was the last time religion cured a disease? Or made a life-improving discovery? Or did anything but make simple people feel better about dying or life being hard or what-have-you? No thanks, and keep your decrepit ideas away from my children.

As for this book itself, the illustrations are a creepy sort of photorealism I really don't care for--like "highlighted" Thomas Kinkade reproductions--the story is simple and easy enough, but it's loaded with god references, a veiled scripture reference, and ends on a smarmy note about FAITH BEING THE GREATEST TREASURE OF ALL. I beg to disagree. You might have faith that your god wants you to go to work to make money and be prosperous, while someone else has a different faith that he needs to crash a plane into your building and move onto a ridiculous afterlife; reason is what we need here. Reason, a sense of wonder, a sense of gratitude for what is and what's real--these are what we need to pass on to our children, not a high, unquestioning tolerance for nonsense.

Get your kid a good book instead. I recommend OWL AT HOME, by Arnold Lobel, which teaches kindness and friendship and a bit of healthy skepticism.

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