The Helicopter Parent's Reading List
Six classic children's books that get too close for comfort.
by Lynn Harris
January 13, 2009
4. THE RUNAWAY BUNNY by Margaret Wise Brown
Another rabbit at risk: poor bunny is just trying to test some boundaries, create some healthy distance. And no wonder: each time he comes up with a creative escape plan ("I will be a crocus in a hidden garden") mommy bunny foils it by vowing to follow ("If you become a crocus in a hidden garden, I will be a gardener. And I will find you.") [Emphasis added by cowering parent.] Finally — soul killed, will destroyed — the little fella gives up and stays home.
5. THE GIVING TREE by Shel Silverstein
"Go ahead, Taking Boy, just show up anytime — and only when — you need something, preferably with an axe. No, really. I'll just sit here in the dirt alone." (Also a good guide for abusive boyfriends.)
6. LOVE YOU FOREVER by Robert Munsch
Legions of devotees insist this book still moves them to tears. All others are moved to hide under their beds. First — and least, but still unappealing — there's the inexplicably toilet-centric cover, on a book that has nothing to do with the potty. Then: the mother sings the cloying little ditty of the title to her baby — and later, as he grows, to her troublemaking toddler . . . while he sleeps.
Fine. But he becomes a tween, and a teen — and she still opens his bedroom door, crawls across the floor, picks him up, rocks him, and sings the same goddamn thing. So he grows up and moves (good) across town (not far enough). "On dark nights," turns out, his mother drives over with a ladder on the roof of her car, climbs into his window, crawls across the floor, and . . . yeah. Spoiler: she gets old; the roles are reversed, you get the picture. (We wish we could get the picture — grown man rocking dying mother in lap — out of our heads.) The only thing missing: the smothering mother ghost crawls across the floor . . .
©2009 Babble
About the Author
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Lynn Harris is an award-winning journalist, author of the comic novel Death By Chick Lit, and co-creator of the venerable website BreakupGirl.net. She and her husband live in Brooklyn with their toddler, Bess, and baby, Sam, who are polishing up their Vaudeville act.
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