![]() ![]() "Good Dog, Carl" by Alexandra Day ups the ante by adding troubling pet ownership to bad parenting. No, the mother goes back to picking blueberries, as Sal surely told her therapist over and over again 30 years later. What makes this story absolutely horrifying is not Sal and Mom's near-maulings, but the fact that when Mom finds Sal there is no tearful hug as she promises never to leave her toddler alone on Blueberry Hill again. Mom is so busy blueberry-picking and fantasizing about canning, she doesn't even notice that the kid has been replaced by a bear. Sal sucks at it, as small children generally do with anything involving delayed gratification, so Sal's mother leaves Sal on the side of a hill so she can take care of business. ![]() In Robert McCloskey's "Blueberries for Sal," the mother takes adorable little preschool-aged Sal blueberry-picking. Sure, many of these books were written when people had children for the free labor and tried not to get too attached because you were bound to lose a few along the way, but we are somehow still reading them today, in the era of calling the police on any parent not in perpetual physical contact with their offspring. ![]() ![]() Of all disturbing tropes in children's books, the most common is neglect. ![]()
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