After bitterly complaining about the state of children’s books and how boring and terrible so many of them are, I thought it would only be fair to remind you of the best book ever written for children. This one (represented below by my own amazing photography: Millions of Cats, although Hurry, Hurry, Mary Dear is a close second, the Runaway Bunny is great but also kind of creepy):
If you’ve never heard of Millions of Cats, here’s a great little piece about how it came to be and what it’s about:
Here’s the story: a very old man and a very old woman live together in a house surrounded by flowers. The only thing missing in their lives is “a sweet little fluffy cat” (the cats in question were modeled after Gág’s own, Noopy), and so the very old man goes off to search for one. But instead of one, he finds “hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats.” Obviously, he has to bring them all home. Which causes some problems! In the end, they all eat each other (that’s right), leaving only the homeliest cat—who only needs some love and milk to become beautiful.
Now, if you have grown up on a steady diet of Thomas Kincaid throwing up children’s books, you might be a little alarmed at all the “problems” faced by the very old man and the very old woman. First, of course, there is the universal trouble of needing to collect and keep all the cats. It’s fine to think to yourself when you wake up on the average humid and sultry morning, I’ll just have one. But after a few weeks, if you’re not careful, you find yourself feeding eight, nine, ten, or even eleven cats. It might not be literally a million, but the cat food bill will say otherwise.
Just a few of my mother’s cats, waiting to be fed.
This introduces the child to two essential themes that dog (cough) all humankind through this mortal life. First greed–not being able to see that owning everything isn’t very nice and we should all practice leaving some cats for others. And second, whatever the lack of self-control is called. I know there’s a word, but I can’t remember. The child goes over the page with her fat baby finger, tracing out cat after cat, and sees that it’s important to be able to say no to the desires of the flesh. No, I won’t have another donut. No, I won’t have that millionth glass of wine. No, I won’t scroll one more time through twitter. No, I won’t go out and get just one more cat.
Moreover, ours is a violent and desperate world. As we search for beauty and joy, going over hills and valleys and past lakes of water, our greed our lack of self-control means that we crush the earth. All the cats eat all the grass, drink all the water, and demand all our attention. We are cruel. Our cats are cruel. And in the end, we devour each other. Children need to learn this early on.
But ultimately, of course, there is a happy ending, and that is the discovery that one cat is enough. The very old man and the very old woman finally see this, discovering also that ugly cats can become beautiful with time and a little attention…well, actually, a lot of attention, constant attention. Goodness, I guess I must stop doing this because I can’t type and dangle a piece of yarn over the side of my chair, and the cat here is angry with me.
So, you see, in the matter of children’s books, all I can say is Do Better.
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