Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Tiger?
Abbie is now showing fear. This is an important emotion for her to learn to recognize now, or else when she’s a teenager she won’t be able to ignore her fear of punishment when she breaks curfew. While I have heard of young children frightened by fairly innocuous things, like chairs or Scott Baio, Abbie’s fears are so far confined to a couple of semi-legitimate sources, both books.
The first book is filled with photos of puppies. Even though the staff at Abbie Update own a dog, and has several neighbor dogs in the area around corporate headquarters, the only dogs Abbie shows any fear of are in this book. Fair enough, since many of the puppies are shown from odd perspectives, and seeing an otherwise cute puppy with a freakishly large body part, like a head or a coccyx, honestly creeps me out a little. Nothing specific scares her, but after a few pages she’ll start screaming
The other book that frightens her is about tigers. It’s eight information-packed pages detailing the important parts of a tiger, like claws, fur, and eyes. The last two pages are the ones that scare her. They contain the words “(a tiger has) a growl to tell you she’s hungry, and she’s standing behind you, so RUN!” The illustration accompanying these words show the tiger chasing the same monkeys that she peacefully cohabitated with a few pages earlier. These pages understandably scare Abbie, and I don’t know what other effect they could have on a child. It’s like the publishers said “let’s make a book to punish all those parents who don’t thoroughly read it themselves before reading it to their children! We can charge more than $.50 per page for it!” To her credit, it took Abbie a few readings before showing fear of this part. After the first fear-induced crying fit, I tried reading the words sweetly but got the same result. Then I tried not reading the words, and she still started crying, possibly triggered by the ancient tiger habit of sneaking up behind babies when they’re hungry and growling (the tiger, not the baby). So Abbie shows fear. I’m sure her teenage social life will thank her for finding it now.
The first book is filled with photos of puppies. Even though the staff at Abbie Update own a dog, and has several neighbor dogs in the area around corporate headquarters, the only dogs Abbie shows any fear of are in this book. Fair enough, since many of the puppies are shown from odd perspectives, and seeing an otherwise cute puppy with a freakishly large body part, like a head or a coccyx, honestly creeps me out a little. Nothing specific scares her, but after a few pages she’ll start screaming
The other book that frightens her is about tigers. It’s eight information-packed pages detailing the important parts of a tiger, like claws, fur, and eyes. The last two pages are the ones that scare her. They contain the words “(a tiger has) a growl to tell you she’s hungry, and she’s standing behind you, so RUN!” The illustration accompanying these words show the tiger chasing the same monkeys that she peacefully cohabitated with a few pages earlier. These pages understandably scare Abbie, and I don’t know what other effect they could have on a child. It’s like the publishers said “let’s make a book to punish all those parents who don’t thoroughly read it themselves before reading it to their children! We can charge more than $.50 per page for it!” To her credit, it took Abbie a few readings before showing fear of this part. After the first fear-induced crying fit, I tried reading the words sweetly but got the same result. Then I tried not reading the words, and she still started crying, possibly triggered by the ancient tiger habit of sneaking up behind babies when they’re hungry and growling (the tiger, not the baby). So Abbie shows fear. I’m sure her teenage social life will thank her for finding it now.
posted by Matt at
10:36 PM
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