Susan Ohanian: Schools Matter: Moby-Dick for Babies: Marvel or Monster

Schools Matter: Moby-Dick for Babies: Marvel or Monster:

Moby-Dick for Babies: Marvel or Monster

NOTE: This first appeared in the Charlotte News, May 17, 2017
Susan Ohanian

A display at my village library invites parents and others who care about young children’s literacy development to take a look at the new assault on childhood—baby versions of the classics.
Cozy Classics, publishers of the baby board-book Moby Dick, claim the book “captures the essence of a literary masterpiece” and is the “perfect vehicle for early learning.” In just 12 words! A Wall Street Journal reviewer insists that this publisher has “done a service to literate families everywhere.” The infant can also settle in for War and Peace, also in just 12 words: soldier-friends-run-dance-goodbye-hug-horse-boom!-hurt-sleep-snow-love. And then move on to Emma, Jane Eyre, Les Miserables, Great Expectations and so on and so on.

BabyLit® offers Anna Karenina as a fashion primer: gown, earring, hairpins and so on. Or Romeo & Juliet: A BabyLit® Counting Primer: 1 balcony through 10 kisses. No deaths. With The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Camping Primer, parents can offer infants such words as “raft,” “river” and “fishing line.”

KinderGuides is another firm set on helping parents move on from Baby Einstein into great literature. The headline of a front page article in the Business Section of The New York Times offered this summary: “Forget ‘Pat the Bunny,’ My child is reading Hemingway.” Well, not quite. KinderGuides reduces the narrative of The Old Man and the Sea, a tale specifically mentioned when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize, to explanation points and editorial intrusions:
Hemingway: “The old man was gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

KinderGuides: “The other fishermen make fun of Santiago, saying he’s forgotten how to catch fish. Hey, that’s not nice!”

Blake Edwards knew he had to make dramatic changes to Holly Golightly’s lifestyle if he wanted to get a movie version of Schools Matter: Moby-Dick for Babies: Marvel or Monster: