This flaw is also present in directives for authenticity like Matthew McConaughey’s “Just Because,” a whirlwind of unobjectionable truisms (“Just because you threw shade, doesn’t mean I’m out of the sun”), and “The World Needs More Purple People,” by Kristen Bell and Benjamin Hart. Purple people are the best sort of people (somewhere, Ann of “Ann Likes Red” is weeping into a crimson tissue). Their characteristics include using one’s voice, gardening, working “super-duper hard,” being handy, and asking questions befitting a dating app: “Have you ever met a dolphin?” The book is thoroughly executed, positing many routes to cyanosis, but in tackling everything, it grips nothing. I haven’t felt such pressure to be abstractly wonderful since “I Promise,” by LeBron James, in which readers are encouraged to “be a team player and a winner.” Collections of agreeable statements can create a loose sense of camaraderie. But so can watching a stranger with toilet paper stuck to their shoe, and at least there’s a story there.
None of these books lead with “children should be seen and not heard,” because none of them were written by my maternal grandmother. So the question is not “What vile lessons are these famous people propagating?” but “What are they offering instead?” “Peanut Goes for the Gold,” by Jonathan Van Ness, of “Queer Eye,” is also about uniqueness but with a raison d’être. Peanut is perhaps the first nonbinary rhythmic-gymnast guinea pig in literary history. On one level, the book exists for its description. On another, it exists to get kids in the habit of using someone’s preferred pronouns, even if that someone is a domesticated rodent in a leotard. Alas, the innovation ends there. “Peanut has their own way of doing things,” the book states, meaning that Peanut likes doing cartwheels on a basketball court. During a gymnastics competition, Peanut sticks their landing. They get a perfect score from every judge.
It’s illuminating to compare “Peanut Goes for the Gold,” an individualism book, with John Cena’s “Elbow Grease,” a perseverance book. “Elbow Grease” is the story of the smallest truck at the demolition derby. Even with all the gumption in the world, the eponymous Elbow Grease does not win his climactic race. His proffered lesson is more nuanced: “If you only stick with what you’re good at, you’ll never learn anything.” Elbow Grease and Peanut face different challenges: one is waiting for a growth spurt, the other is waiting on the world to change. Elbow Grease has the luxury of setbacks; Peanut needs the win. But all children deserve the pleasure of suspense.
There’s more under the hood in Dale Earnhardt, Jr.,’s “Buster and the Race Car Graveyard,” the platonic ideal of a perseverance book. Buster and his friends are ninety-nine per cent anthropomorphization, one per cent inspiration. Their favorite activities are arbitrarily assigned (telling ghost stories, picking pumpkins). But the descriptions of the graveyard are downright Saundersian. Branches crackle, roots gnarl, dried leaves swirl through the pages. The cars are startled by a ghost car named Brenda (a perfectly imperfect name), who introduces them to other friendly ghost vehicles, most of whom have experienced deadly crashes and now honk funny. The book is about bravery, though there’s a tonal funkiness to espousing the merits of driving two hundred and eighty miles per hour to “ages 4 to 8.” Perceptive parents will know that Dale Earnhardt, the author’s father, died in 2001 when his car slammed into a retaining wall on the Daytona International Speedway. This is a son’s jaunty fantasy of the afterlife.
Such depth is lacking from the actress Eva Mendes’s saccharine “Desi, Mami, and the Never-Ending Worries,” which fits squarely into the subgenre of mental perseverance. Desi has trouble falling asleep because of an endless cycle of intrusive thoughts about monsters. After her mother takes a tumble into existentialism (“What if you tried to separate yourself from your thoughts?”), Desi, like Buster, faces her fears. This book’s rightful home is in the waiting room of a child psychologist’s office, where it should be presented in the same spirit with which Dum-Dums are left in a dentist’s reception area. And yet, we have ourselves a noble motivation, encouraging anxious children to harness the power of their imaginations. “Desi” wants to help. But is that enough?
If children reject or embrace these books, they do so without all this hand-wringing. As for myself, an adult allowing mounds of celebrity picture books into her home for the first time, I grew curious and curiouser: Was I expecting too much from these lighthearted tales by shiny people? Where, in the vast expanse between a Caldecott Medal and a googly eye, should these titles be situated? Even in success (such as Reese Witherspoon’s “Busy Betty” and Jimmy Fallon’s “Papa Doesn’t Do Anything!,” both lively blends of individualism and perseverance), best in group is not the same as best in show.
I needed metrics. So I immersed myself in Sendak and Snicket. I polled friends about what they fed into the minds of their own progeny and received lists so formidable, I stopped asking. While I can now vouch for recent hits such as Ryan T. Higgins’s “We Don’t Eat Our Classmates” and Drew Daywalt’s “The Day the Crayons Quit,” as well as enchanting deep cuts like “How Little Lori Visited Times Square,” by Amos Vogel, and “The Little Island,” by Margaret Wise Brown, my critical faculties emerged no sharper, dealing, as I was, with a different species of book. In these works by professional authors, there’s a deference to children that’s absent from their media-savvy counterparts. “The Day the Crayons Quit” is epistolary, featuring protest letters from overused crayons, with yellow and orange vying to be the rightful color of the sun. “How Little Lori Visited Times Square” is about a kid with a modest case of wanderlust who befriends a talking turtle. It ends with a cliffhanger, giving young readers a chance to do what they do best: wonder.
I wasn’t going to clarify my stance on this pervasive publishing trend by avoiding it. Had I learned nothing from the perseverance books? The only way to get the whole picture was to face my fears and dive down, down, down, past the tutus and the ghost cars, down, down, down, to the very bottom of the narrative well: to books that espouse neither individualism nor perseverance. These are stories that have generously liberated themselves from the pretense of being for children. Hold on to your ballots: these titles tend to come from political figures or their spouses, authors who beam themselves into flawless family units as proofs of concept for broader political convictions.
In Chasten Buttigieg’s “Papa’s Coming Home,” Rosie and Jojo plan for the return of their papa, who has been on the road. What’s he been doing on the road? Who can say, but a calendar stuck to the refrigerator reads “papa in Mishuhgen.” It’s time to pull out all the stops (and the glitter) to prepare for Papa’s arrival. The children bake a seven-layer cake, which is six more layers than this story has. With the help of their dad, Papa’s partner, they load up the car with gifts until there’s hardly any room for Papa to sit. What else is there to say? Someone sure did bind this.