Kids' books are reality checks for grown-ups

"There was something vaguely sad about the rock. It was as old as it looked, standing weathered and lonely amidst the stretch of sand, and its thoughts were quiet as it listened to the waves." - The Rock and the Bird, Chew Chia Shao Wei

ONCE upon a time, there was a book that seized a reader with each turn of the page. That book for me has been a children's story written by a then-14-year-old from Singapore.

The Rock and the Bird tells a simple story of a friendship between a large rock patiently stuck on a beach as waves relentlessly violate its being, and a relentless bird who is impatient with the vagaries of life.

It took just a few minutes to finish the book, thanks to the generous browsing freedom at the independent bookstore Littered with Books on Duxton Road.

But it left my mind percolating with thoughts about life, which was ever impressive coming from a book written by a teenager.

Without giving too much away, the illustrated book takes readers through the life cycle of a relationship, conveying mood and stoicism in about 40 pages. (And yes, buy it from a local bookstore.)

Children's books have always had a way of telling bigger truths that would otherwise seem trite or unconvincing when told as a matter of fact, from a weathered adult's point of view.

Ironically, of course, these truths are typically rediscovered when children's books are read once more by kids turned adults. And as reality goes, it isn't quite happily after ever.

Take the 1964 children's book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It tells a poignant tale of a boy who takes and takes from an apple tree.

A simple moral-of-the-story conclusion for kids would be that of selfless love.

But New Yorker contributor Ruth Margalit wrote that her rereading of the book as an adult, after stumbling upon a fiftieth-anniversary edition at the bookstore, was one of dismay.

"A strange thing happens when we encounter a book we used to love and suddenly find it charmless; the feeling is one of puzzled dissociation," she wrote in 2014.

For one thing, she noticed for the first time that the tree was a "she". The subtext is that mothers are meant to give and give, till they are stripped bare - a reading between the lines not meant for childlike minds.

Her New Yorker piece went on to dissect Silverstein's biography, to find that he grew up an unhappy man.

He detested the messages behind children's books, and once said: "Hell, a kid's already scared of being small and insignificant. So what does EB White give them? A mouse who's afraid of being flushed down the toilet or rolled up in a window shade and a spider who's getting ready to die."

Silverstein's foray into writing children's books was simply a bold experiment for him, considering that it was the complete opposite flavour of the illustrations he was doing for Playboy. (If we need evidence of how Silverstein's lifestyle was far from innocent, his biography findshim to be a regular at the Playboy mansion.)

The New Yorker's Margalit asked if she had been deceived all this time about the tree's presumed happiness.

"All we see is a sorry stump and a hunched old man staring forlornly into the distance...maybe the book isn't about love or happiness at all, but a lament about the passing of time, an unsentimental view of physical decay, a withering away," she wrote.

As if to hammer the last nail into the wooden coffin of sentimentality, she looked to Silverstein's conclusion of the story. "It's about a boy and a tree. It has a pretty sad ending."

Children's books are mostly heavy on the philosophy. The Calvin and Hobbes series - based on the friendship between a young boy Calvin, and his stuffed tiger Hobbes - debates from time to time the thinking behind the theologian John Calvin and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

In one cartoon strip, the dialogue between the two characters on predestination, authority, and free will, goes like this:

Calvin: "Do you believe our destinies are controlled by the stars?"

Hobbes: "No, I think we can do whatever we want with our lives."

Calvin: "Not to hear Mom and Dad tell it."

Finally, consider the collection of Winnie the Pooh books, which has inspired a few studies on how the hunny bear's thinking can rival the greatest Greek philosophers. These "Poohisms", as they are called, include Winnie the Pooh's profound and whimsical musing on meaning. "People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day," he ponders.

Meanwhile, we all grow up to find pals who match in likeness to Pooh's friends in the Hundred Acres Wood. Everyone knows a spirited Tigger, while Rabbit is the caricature of the intellectual snob of the bunch. ("You and I have brains," Rabbit tells Owl. "The others have fluff. If there is any thinking to be done in this Forest - and when I say thinking, I mean thinking - you and I must do it.")

As dour takes from children's books go, Eeyore is the greatest doomsayer of them all. But the grey donkey subverts the happily-ever-after ending with his brand of funny melancholy. I suppose this is adulting: keeping up the humour as reality insists that we take ourselves seriously.

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.

"So it is."

"And freezing."

"Is it?"

"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."