Naughty children's books.

• Author: Cusac, Anne-Marie
• Position: Books - In the light - Bibliography - Column

One day in 1990, my mom called me up, very excited, and said she was sending me a gift. When a book from her arrived in the mail, I was surprised at the title: Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Literature, by Alison Lurie. To say the least, it seemed like an odd present to get from your mother.

In the foreword to this excellent book, Lurie describes her discovery during childhood that there were two types of kid's literature.

"The first kind, the great majority, told me what grown-ups had decided I ought to know or believe about the world," writes Lurie, observing that such books teach kids "to be more like respectable grown-ups."

The second kind, however, "were the sacred texts of childhood, whose authors had not forgotten what it was like to be a child." Books of that sort, says Lurie, "recommended--even celebrated--daydreaming, disobedience, answering back, running away from home, and concealing one's private thoughts and feelings from unsympathetic grown-ups. They overturned adult pretentions and made fun of adult institutions, including school and family."

My mom, a self-effacing, polite woman, helped raise two independent daughters by:

1) Informing my sister and me that, statistically speaking, we were likely to be future divorcees, so we must have careers and be capable of taking care of our lives;

2) Encouraging my very athletic sister to be very athletic;

3) Helping me to read everything I could get my hands on, including "naughty" or "dangerous" books.

In the spirit of Alison Lurie and my mom, I'd like to recommend a picture book featuring a pig named Olivia, who "always blossoms in front of an audience." In Olivia Saves the Circus, by Ian Falconer (Atheneum, 32 pages), the little pig is supposed to give a class talk about her summer vacation, Olivia provides a detailed narrative about the day she went to the circus. "When we got there, all the circus people were out sick with ear infections," she reports. Happily for the circus performers and the audience, Olivia, an extremely capable pig, takes over the whole show. "I was Olivia the Tattooed Lady," she says. "Then I was Olivia the Lion Tamer and Olivia the Tight-rope Walker and I walked on stilts and juggled and was Olivia the Clown and rode a unicycle. I was the Flying Olivia, and Olivia, Queen of the Trampoline...."

Olivia is not what you would call obedient. When her teacher insinuates that she is telling a lie, she resists him, even though he scowls at her. When her mother asks about her day at school, she gives one-word answers.

One of the keys to this young female pig who knows how to do everything is the picture that hangs above Olivia's bed. It shows Eleanor Roosevelt with her arms raised.

Like Olivia, there are many recent children s books with political or subversive themes.

Goin' Someplace Special (Atheneum, 32 pages), illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, won the 2002 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. I was entranced...