“Don’t dress your cat in an apron, just cause he’s learning to bake; don’t dress your horse in a nightgown, just ‘cause he can’t stay awake….”
If you are a parent of a certain age, those words are instantly recognizable to you as one of the poems in “Free To be…You and Me.” The stories and songs and poems in that book, I don’t think it’s too much a stretch to say, helped shape the consciousness of a whole generation of people who are currently parenting.
I know I made sure my daughter had a copy of the book as soon as she was old enough for longer stories. I read the book and listened to the record endlessly when I was her age – my own parents recall it fondly from their days of parenting little kids – and now I have the supreme joy of sharing it with my daughter, who loves it as much as I do.
Well, now a new edition is coming out, with updated art, for the book’s 35th anniversary. This should be wonderful – while some of the book’s 1970s illustrations have worn well, some, well, not so much.
But this, the purpose of the book, is as relevant and inspiring as it ever was:
“…each story, each sentence, each word in Free to Be . . . You and Me was written to remind you that you're the hero of your own life adventure, and that you can write your story any way that you dream it can be.”
