On about our 20th reading of Llama Llama Red Pajama, it struck me that Mama Llama was doing dishes while talking on a slimline, wall-mounted, spiral corded phone, and I wondered if my kid even knew what that was. I asked, she shrugged her shoulders, which could have meant "no" or could have meant "I'm not a trained monkey ... keep reading!"
Later, I flipped back to see when it was published, 2005. Christ, even my in-laws had upgraded to a cordless by then. That's when I started seeing dated technology in everything we read.
Slate has a nitpicky slideshow -- Llama Llama Red Pajama launches the pictoral thesis (I'm vindicated!) -- delving into why kids lit illustrators don't bring the most updated technology to the pages of kids books. One idea is that by dating the technolgy, parents are able to harken back to their own childhoods and develop a fondness for the book. In deconstructing the huge set of headphones on a passerby in Knuffle Bunny, the writer detects a nod to some Brooklyn dwellers' purposeful embrace of old technologies (yes, but would they call for take-out on that clunker of a phone in Goodnight, Moon? Just asking.)
Image: Slate
