It snowed yesterday. Consistent hours of powdery fluff, the kind that blankets the world and makes everything brighter, more quiet, and muted.
My little neighbor across the way – she’s two I think – wielded a shovel twelve times her size and danced in her boots.
As I watched her delight, I remembered a book: The Snowy Day. Do you remember it too? It was about a little boy enjoying a snow day, with illustrations that looked like paper cuts but were actually watercolor. He wore red from head to toe, and he looked back at his footprints in the snow.
What I didn’t realize until I looked it up was that the book was written in 1962 and featured one of the first Black main characters in a children’s book. The hero’s Black face is etched in my mind, but I hadn’t thought of him in terms of the historical context. What a statement that choice made – at the time, and even decades after it was written.
My memory of this book was automatic, and it reminded me of something important: What we read and consume as kids shapes us in ways we will never realize.
So let’s make sure we curate the books we share with our children. Let’s make sure they get messages we want them to receive, and that they see people of all races, religions and circumstances.
I used to be that aunt. The one who always gave books. Not just books, but books that were different. I thought they were interesting and important. I’m sure they were received at first as strange.
I stopped doing that a while ago, in favor of gift cards so the kids could have some autonomy. Let’s be honest, I wanted to be the cool aunt for a change. I wanted them to like what I gave them.
Watch out guys, I may be going back to strange books.
Because art solidifies ideas in our minds from an early age. And how could I possibly allow Nintendo to do that work?
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