Essential Questions

Being described as a "shallow" person is a painful epithet. Likewise, we use the word "flat" to describe a character in a book or movie that lacks depth. We long to see someone who responds virtuously to a wide range of experiences, from painful to ecstatic. The people who gracefully handle both we rightly call heroes. We look for them in literature and in life, because their way of being can handle both the hard and the easy.

What makes us long for depth?
Why are these kinds of characters so appealing? And why is a flat character or a shallow person so repulsive? We want a way of seeing the world and being in the world that is comprehensive. It relates back to the first question Is the story authentic? To be authentic is to correspond to the way the world really is. To be truly authentic, it must also be comprehensive. It cannot just correspond to one part of the world, but to the world in its entirety.

Can your story handle adversity?
There are many children's books that have a small, simple plot. Yet as they grow up, children what more than, "Where's Spot?" They want a problem that looks more like the real world, and has a satisfying solution. The books that children (and adults) love - the books that endure as classics - offer problems that reflect the complexity of the real world, and resolutions that reflect the reality of this world.

What is the story that shapes your lens?
One of the challenges and privileges of parenting is realizing that your story is too small. It worked for you when you didn't have to think about what was important to impart to your children. But when you consider it carefully, you find it lacking. This is good news! This is the test of comprehensiveness at work. You may well find that the story that defines your life isn't comprehensive enough for the experience of parenting. If there are gaps that you're not aware of, your children will be sure to point them out as they grow up.

The point is not to hide from or deny these gaps, but to seek a way of seeing the world that has integrity, and is comprehensive. It will involve asking many honest questions. The integrity of asking those questions, and admitting when you don't have an answer, is precisely what will communicate the importance of integrity to your children.

When you walk into the library and begin browsing the shelves of the children's section to find books to read with your child, you have a set of criteria - conscious or unconscious - that shape your selections. Each of us has criteria that makes some books winners, and others losers. Those criteria determine whether you will want to give a book to a friend's child as a birthday gift - or if you'd put it in the recycling bin if you received it as a gift.

Is your story authentic?
Perhaps the first question that should be asked, both of the children's literature you select, and of the story that defines who you are is: Is it authentic? In other words: Does it correspond to the way things really are?

If you walk into the kitchen and find milk poured out all over the floor, and you ask your five year old, "What happened?" and he says, "The cat spilled it," your first question is whether this explanation corresponds to reality. If you don't have a cat, it is unlikely that the child's story is true. When we, or a child, tell a story that doesn't correspond to reality, we call that deceit. It isn't just the stories our children tell us. If you tell your child that there is a surprise waiting for him when he finishes his dinner, and there is no surprise, he will quickly call your bluff. The story didn't correspond to the way things really are. It was deceitful.

Children's literature functions much the same way. Each author presents us with a book that expresses certain assumptions about the way things are, and the way they ought to be. If we see that, in the form of a story, they express something authentic - something that corresponds to the way the world really is - it resonates with us and touches us. These are the authors, like Patricia Polacco, to whom we return again and again, because the stories are authentic. They may well be fictional stories, but what they communicate rings true because they are authentic.

Not just children's literature
It is easy to see how this functions with children's literature. We just won't keep picking up books by authors that we think are presenting a distorted view of reality. Yet the same question, "Is it authentic?" is not limited to children's literature, but is a helpful question for evaluating the story, the system of meaning, that we communicate to our children.

Raising children forces these questions upon us: What do we want for our children? What is the meaning that shapes our family, and our existence? Many who were raised in the United States would answer, "I want for my children to have a better life than I have had." Then comes the question, "What do you mean by a better life?" Does it mean having a bigger house? Or living in a better neighborhood? Or going to a better school?

Are these answers authentic? Do they correspond to the way things really are? Are people with bigger houses happier? Are those in nicer neighborhoods more contented? Are those in better schools more virtuous?

For those who have never pressed these questions, they can be disturbing. They cause us to question whether the story that we have received, and that we embody, is authentic. Does it tell the truth about the way things are? Does it fit with my feelings of great delight in watching a falcon fly, or swimming in a clear, still lake? Does it account for why I can be so angry about injustice - or so indifferent to it?

These sorts of questions, although challenging and sometimes painful, are necessary for parents who desire to impart to their children a way of seeing and being in the world that is authentic.