I've never really thought of it that way now ill make sure to read my sister safe books :)

by reading the article, yes agree in some part. I have read may children many books and yes, I found myself in a situation that I have to respond to me children some questions like why they are doing that in the story or maybe they got scared of what they read. Yes, i think some authors should be very careful of what they write for children.

at first I thought this article was real! If MsHreen actually thinks this about childrens books she needs to lighten up but otherwise it gave me a good laugh. Also just a fact for you it wouldn't have mattered if there was hand sanitizer in green eggs in ham IT DOSN"T WORK!
Funny article though.

Obviously satire? Yes.

Funny? No.

I know all these books, reading them umpteen times to my three children and this article made me laugh out loud! Thank you for a completely hilarious, satirical take on all those classics. Well done!

Really?...C'mon...Its kids books for kids. They dont think about the details they just wanna laugh and hear a good story to there young mindes.They have there whole life to worrie about sanitasion and health issues, thats what mom is for. Let the kids hear these books theres absolutly nothing wrong with them.

Uh-mazing! Thanks so much for the incredible chuckle!

Count me as one a reader who laughed her way through the entire thing and knew from the first joke that it was satire. FanTAStic satire, especially in the world we live where the topic brushed up against so many current issues.

Maybe I found it so funny because I've read those very books to my kids a million times. (I admit to thinking Carl is the worst babysitter EVER . . .)

Well done!

LOVED this essay! Laughed out LOUD. Every bit as true now as it was when I read these stories to my now 19 year old!

Lady, you're ravin, absolutely insane lol. So what? -you mean you didn't read children stories when you were a little girl?
Dang, you Americans really amaze me with your pseudo- values. Next time, try and stop your 7-year-old form listening to news. Oh, sorry, they have to grow up.
Sheesh. Get a life.

The intent may have been humorous, but there is also truth in what is said. Check out the analysis of Goodnight Moon in Have a Carrot: Oedipal Theory and Symbolism in Margaret Wise Brown's Runaway Bunny Trilogy. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/21324

To everyone saying this is humor: isn't humor supposed to be funny?

I've been receiving Smithsonian for many years and this is actually the first time I've ever made a comment about an article. So, in this sense, Ms. Green did an excellent job in getting people to think about this topic-censorship. The first thing that came to mind was the 80's movie, "Footloose", in where they burned books from the school library and censored the teens music. My first thought was, this has got to be satire. I plowed through to the end, feeling humored and horrified at the same time. Then, the big wrap up just didn't happen. You know, the one where she intimates that she is making a point about how ridiculous some people can be. An article like this really shouldn't leave you wondering-is she serious or what? If you're poking fun, make sure everyone knows it. And no, I haven't lost my sense of humor. I totally get tongue and cheek and I think that many of these other people do too. When you write for the public, you need to take into account your audience; not everyone will be familiar with your style of wit and humor. It's becomes even more unclear when your article is in a magazine that deals with fact, not supposition.

Clever, funny piece. It's a shame that people can get their undies all in a bunch over something like this. Lighten up, people.

Great way to critically think about literature! I might use this article as an introduction for students to become critical thinkers - hmmmm.....

In reading Green Eggs and Salmonella? By Abigail Green, I understand where she is coming from, but I disagree. Today’s society does hold many health concerns and family issues, but the books mentioned are classics. These are stories I grew up reading and read to my own child. Never once were we concerned about what the author has pointed out.
Blueberries for Sal was written in 1976, a time when people did not worry about pesticides on fruit. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss is a silly story written to encourage children to read. The moral is to try new foods before saying you do not like something. It was not to encourage people to eat with mice and fox. Go, Dog, Go (1966) was written in a time when most cars did not have seat belts. If they did, it was not mandatory to wear one. So, why would the dogs use something that most people were not using?
Why do we need to analyze every piece of literature that is out there? It seems a shame to tear a book down when it was written for fun, so kids could get enjoyment from learning how to read. Let kids read for the pure enjoyment of reading. Let them watch dogs be silly and drive cars. Let them laugh at Sam-I-Am as he tries to get the nameless skeptic to eat green eggs and ham. I say, as long as the kids are reading, that is what is most important.

Well, I knew it was supposed to be funny, but frankly it wasn't very funny to me. Yep, the point was made over and over again. I think the gulf between reality and satire needs to be a bit more pronounced to actually be funny or witty. Nice try.

@ Anna the "strait-A" student: thank you! Now I can use this article and the comments to explain satire AND irony to my child some day!

Lighten up, people. It's a joke!

How do people not realize that this is satire? Morons.

I love this article.

I read children's book to elementary kids for a living-school librarian.
But I may never read a children's book again without considering the humorous implications made in the article.
Thank goodness, children have the imagination to enjoy such stories.

Very clever.

I just happened upon this article because I work in a library, and I have to say this article totally threw me! I was reading it and I found myself laughing at the ridiculousness of its content. I thought to myself "Is she serious?!" After I made my colleagues read it, and they had the same reaction, I couldn't help but think, this must be a satire. I am glad that I have had some kind of reassurance from the postings here. But the sad aspect is, I actually believed she was serious, because I am sure some people out there may actually believe children's books are bad influences on their children.

I must have lacked the imagination as a child that Abigail Green has as an adult. My mother read me Goodnight Moon every night which preceded my sweetest of slumbers. The thought of the bunny -- excuse me, child -- falling out of bed, and rolling into a fire after getting his eyes poked out by tongs and other "dangerous tools" including the knitting needles that reminded me of dear old grammy just never crossed my oh-so impressionable mind. The book continues to be one of my favorites and I look forward to reading it to my children some day, though Green's uptight "satire" suggesting to weave sense into fantasy has somewhat turned the innocent imagery into a crime scene. Thanks for tainting some of the last-standing remnants of my childhood imagination Ms. Green! Only an evil step-mother would do such a thing.

Dear Anna,

1. Congratulations on being such a hard-working, talented, and smart young person. I hope that your accomplishments in your serious pursuits are matched by similar heights in play.

2. Welcome to the world of satire. As your understanding of the world becomes more and more real, you will surely come across moments when something you read or hear is utterly contradictory to how you understand the world works. You may find yourself offended, angry, and incredulous. If so, ask yourself "can this be serious? is it a joke?" Not a "funny ha-ha joke," but a "oh my god, this is so wrong it's funny" joke. Now, what makes this article such good satire--and so disturbing--is that it so closely mimics reality that it's really hard for some people to answer the questions I asked you to ask yourself. Yes, there are people out there that take their parenting so seriously that they wouldn't read "Green Eggs" to their children. These overly serious types make the less serious types a little defensive--so much so that they can miss the satire in an article like this.

If you would like to learn more about satire, please visit theonion.com. Everything they write is satire--just in case you're wondering.

PS: I hope your response wasn't satire, or I completely missed it!

Thanks for the laugh! As a mom to five kids and a former school teacher, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Most of these books are favorites of my children. I need to pick up Blueberries for Sal. I think they would enjoy it, too!

very funny--the comments from the uptight folks who don't get the satire---amazing. Relax people!

I am twelve and get smithsonian. I like reading all the cool science and history stuff, but when i ran across this article i was not at all satisfied. I completely understand wanting to shade a kid from some of the more colorfull things public entertainment has to offer, but Smithsonian isn't a parenting magasine. I grew up on most of those books, and never did it occur to me that it was such a bad thing for a bunny to be missing bedrails. In fact, they helped form who i am now. I get strait As, am first chair in trumpet, recently won an art campetition, and have as yet failed to be subject to salmonella.

Yeah and have you even looked closely at the art produced by Disney in their Classic movies. As a child I loved watching those movies and when you are that young you don't recognize the same things as adults. The brains are at a different stage in development. Plus, do you remember Pinocchio? That move was terrifying! Getting turned into a donkey because they drank and smoked? And being swallowed by a whale to find his dad there too? As a mother I couldn't imagine not reading bedtime stories to my daughter or even considering her not being able to watch a movie just because we see something different now. Schools have already taken it upon themselves to ban certain games from being played because of physical contact? What's next...you take away football? or rugby? or soccer? or basketball? Are you even considering taking away Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Because come on, they have nothing to do with the reason why those days were originally celebrated. Did you have such a bad childhood that you are going to make your kids grow up without an imagination? I think most adults today will say that they miss something about their childhood and being naive and innocent would have to be what I miss. The creativity in children is amazing and you want to take that away? If your child can't tell the difference between a fairytale and real life then you did something wrong in raising them.

Ahhh... I see that I am not the only observational satire/humor blogger out there to be blessed with readers who "don't get it."

Thanks for a great chuckle, from both the column and the comments. :)

I am incredulous that so many obviously intellegent, well spoken people fail to recognize that this is humor. Thank you for the article. It made me laugh out loud! Keep writing.

Hilarious! Not sure how readers could fail to see this as a work of humor. Haven't any of you read Mark Twain?

LOL, even though the article was hilarious, what was even funnier were the comments of the people wondering if this was serious criticism! LOL!!

I'm a children's librarian. This is hilarious. Trust me.

I'm kind of speechless at how many commenters didn't grok that this is satire.

The more I read the more I couldn't believe what I was reading!!! Never thought there could really exist such a person that missed out on childhood and in the process of becoming an adult missed out also on the beautiful world of imagination...and if this article was intended to be some type of a joke...oh! well...it greatly failed to do be perceived as such.

Ok, Ok! I have stopped laughing at the article and picked up my jaw from reading some of these comments. Wow, people, some of you are way too serious and entirely too critical. This was written to be funny. It clearly is. Even my 14 year old who read it with me thought so. We have to be able to see the humor in things, otherwise we run the risk of becoming unhappy, depressed realists. And some of these faerie tales that people are so quick to defend really are not the stuff of children's stories. Grimm's stories are more often morbid than happy. They do have high body counts. And they rarely end with happily ever after. My 14 year old can tell you that too! Even the original Little Mermaid, Anderson's version -not Disney's, ends with her choosing to die instead of stabbing the man she loves in the heart. That being said, do I think we should not read them because of it? No, but i think perhaps we should censor them a bit. And if we see a bit of humor in a child's story that is based on our own interpretation of the story, then so be it. I love to read to my children, and thankfully I have been blessed to have children that have very varied interests. I have not had to read the same story to them 5,000 times but if I had - you can bet I would be concerned about the eggs that Sam is offering. It would make it a bit fun for me to wonder just how did they get that way and what would happen if you ate green eggs...

After reading some of the other comments, I don't have much to add. I agree that this article does not come across as a humorous one, but rather as being written by someone who is afraid to live, who irrationally fears "germs" and all sorts of "dangers". Her children must be bored silly, if she has any! I admit that the original fairy tales are not good children's bedtime stories, but the rest of the article is ridiculous. If this is humor, more obvious sarcasm and, well, humor, are needed.

Books are a way of escape - didn't you read as a child? It wasn't usually to learn how to live in fear and worry, but to imagine and play and laugh and have fun.

I enjoyed reading some of the comments as much as I did the article! Thank you, everybody, for a good laugh.

The fact is the world can be a dangerous place. Disease does exist, so do broken families, and hazardous substances, and that is precisely why these fairy tales are are good. Do we want to teach our children about how negative the world can be at such a young age? If you want a child to stay clean or stay away from fire. Turn on the news and show them diseases. Put some photos up of 3rd degree burns on children. There ya go, lesson learned. Now your child is scared and forever afraid of these things. Children don't need to be worried about such things. Fairy tales take children away from reality. You do not want to expose your children to all the negativity when they are that young?

To add to one of the previous comments. In regard to Green Eggs and Ham, hand sanitizer as we know it was not patented in the US until 1976. The book was published in 1960.

While reading this, I had no idea whether this article was supposed to be funny, serious, or what. After reading it, I still couldn't figure it out. It seemed as if the author was serious, but I couldn't see how this was a joke. To me, it was like a little five year old convinced that 2+2 equaled 3 and was going around calmly explaining it to people.

So I decided on serious, still with mixed feelings. I am pretty repulsed with this stuff. My kids are 13 and 11, and no matter how many times I can try and tell them to wash their fruits and veggies, half the time they forget, and they're fine. If I don't tell them, they forget to wash their hands before meals and they're fine(now, if they were 5 I'd probably have some issues with that one). Frankly, most of the stories listed would never happen in real life, save the duck one, which might happen...but ducks are kind of instinctual, and leaving the kids would be unlikely to be found.
My kids knew that when I was reading them those wonderful stories(heck, they didn't even know themselves what carpooling was), and I don't see what's wrong with reading fantastic stories from your imagination to little kids.Even if they become cultists to them, they'll forget them in five years anyways when they're "too cool" for it as older children.

HAH! Too funny. The line about being encouraged to eat discolored pork products with a mouse and a goat made me laugh so loud my kids ran over to look at my computer screen.

Wow. Hilarious column. My mom read it in the magazine and told me I HAD TO read it! She was going to "copy it and send it to me" until I told her I could probably find it online. As amusing as the article is (as a lover of the horror genre, I'm obsessed with old fairy tales!) I'd say some of the comments from people who evidently take themselves waaay too seriously are almost equally entertaining!

Amanda and Liz: I have tried really hard to find the sarcasm and humor in the article but it just isn't there. I can see the absurd exaggeration as a way to mock those who are 'mother hens' but it just really fell flat in my opinion.

The Very Hungery Caterpillar is a vast right butterfly wing conspiracy to destroy vegetables. It's not pro-nature--it's ANTI-PLANT! Teaching us to value critters who wantonly destroy gardens? I mean, who gave that caterpillar the right to eat those things? For all we know, he was TRESPASSING TOO!

Shameful. ;)

Thank goodness for readers like Amanda and Liz! Of course it's humor. When did all these intelligent people lose theirs? Did you also think Jonathan Swift was seriously advocating that the Irish eat their children in his "Modest Proposal"? I guess satire is a lost art.

Lol

"Who knew ducks could be deadbeat dads?" Love it! Great article. You know you've mastered satire when people actually believe it!

I find your take on childrens books to be odd, to say the least. I have to say you must have WAY to much time on your hands to pick apart beloved fairy tales.
Goodnight moon ...Really a fire place in the room!! OH my!
Or Go,Dog,Go ...the thought of them not having seat belts? Dogs can't drive!! I just read Blueberries for Sal and I found it to be a great book. Never once did I worry about the blueberries not being washed. They were in a field..in the wild...no pesticides. I think instead of bed time stories you should read your kids the safty procautions on the back of your beloved hand sanitizer. (btw have you ever heard how harmful that stuff could be?)
I think you have a problem with the difference between reality and fairtale. You are missing the message of these stories.
I pray for your boys, I pray they get to play in dirt and have fun. I pray that they can use there imanigation.
I pray that they can over come the bull that you are dishing out.
I hope that you never decide to write childrens books.

My husband and I laughed and laughed while reading this article. As the parents of a three year old, we have all of these stories as part of our reading rotation and privately refer to one of them as 'Good Dog, Carl but Very Bad Mommy'. Who ever thought leaving your child to roam free in bear infested blueberry patches was a good idea anyway? Hilarious. Thank you for this giggly satire. It looks like not all people will read it as such but maybe they think letting dogs cavort atop giant trees without safety harnesses is o.k..

I can see that this is a comic,tongue in cheek article as recently I've wondered about some of the stuff I read when I was a kid.

I still have a lot of my old kids' books which dealt with death,destruction, evolution, politically incorrect situations,junk food, and also "gay" characters (certain kids' characters might be considered homosexual these days). I guess as these are mostly based on fantasy or science I don't have a problem with any kids I have reading these books. The real world is what screws kids up, not books!

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey There’s no mother neglect, the mother is picking berries with little Sal behind her picking her berries. An environment of natural berries is usually a habitat for animals. The blueberries unwashed were probably cleaner and healthier than washed cultivated berries. Oh no! Abigail forgot to tell us that the mother didn’t put insect spray or sunscreen on little Sal.

Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey’s was originally published in 1941. The father does not neglect his family. Mr. Mallard bends over backwards to please Mrs. Mallard in looking for a place to have her ducklings. Once they were settled, he decided to see what the rest of the river was like and said he would meet them in a week in the Public Garden. Mrs. Mallard told him not to worry, “I know all about bringing up children.” And she did. She taught them to swim, dive, walk in a line, come when she called them, keep a safe distance from bikes, scooters and other things with wheels. When she was satisfied with them they began their trek of “dangers” to a little island where “Mr. Mallard was waiting for them, just as he had promised.”

Abigail Green in her “Green Eggs and Salmonella?” article asks us to beware of the hidden hazards in children’s books. Do we need to rethink these “classic” stories?

Let’s start with Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown which was originally published in 1947. We did not live with the hysteria of many of the sited dangers. Many houses were heated with open fire places and kids knew to stay away or get burned. Baby beds had rails but not regular beds. You learned not to sleep close to the edge.

Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman, was published as early as 1961. This was many years before the oil shortage and seat belt laws. I began to wear a seatbelt when I purchased a new Oldsmobile in 1984. Some older cars didn’t even have seat belts. Abigal asks “Have they never heard of carpooling?” The answer is probably not.

Lastly, I’ll comment on Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, 1960. Sam I Am does not push discolored eggs, but colored eggs which happen to be green. “Would you like them in a house?” “Would you like them with a mouse?” It rhymes. “Could you, would you with a goat?” “Would you, could you on a boat?” It rhymes. How do you know if you like something if you don’t try it? “I will try them, you will see.” “Say! I like green eggs and ham!”

Do we need to rethink these “classic” stories? It’s as absurd as rewriting history. James Finn Garner has written some funny modern tales for our more enlightened time, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.

Better, use some common sense when reading to children, explaining the moral of the stories and the times in which they were written. Teach children safety rules and healthy habits. Teach them right from wrong and good from evil. Many newer books have guides for parents since we now live in such an enlightened time. But most importantly, teach them to find the truth.

I have to agree with C. Howard here. Part of a fairy tale's charm is its improbability. Where else but in a children's book can you see rottweilers babysitting kids, traditional little beds with no side rails and grandmothers who still knit instead of shopping in the nearest boutique? Fairy tales and adventure stories are not supposed to be sanitized and perfect versions of what parents think their children should do. If the Darling parents were around when Peter Pan visited, then the whole Never Never Land adventure would never have happened. A story is a child's escape from his/her modern and squeaky-clean reality. Besides, what better way to explain to a kid that crime does happen in this world than through an introductory Brother's Grimm story where someone loses his head. Perhaps the writer of this article prefers to read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to her children -- except for all the imperfect parts at the end, of course. :)

I trully believe that I am the person I am because of my imagination, and because of those fairytales and stories that came around before and during my time. The best moments in my life have required dirt and grime, and no hand sanitizer. I love reading those stories to my children and the children I teach. I love the questions they ask me and the stories they come up with because they see others with imagination. Never was there a question about why the mother left the girl behind, or why the dogs aren't wearing seatbelts. Children look at the silly aspect, the beauty of the butterfly, the Mommy bunny. It is only the adults who have lost sight of their imagination and childhood that worry about the hand sanitizer and the green eggs and the carbon pawprint. Kids know more then we do that they are stories, and its fun to read them, its fun to think of dogs watching kids and driving cars. It is so sad to me that children are starting to grow up too fast, worrying and stressing about things that they shouldsn't be. Kids need to be kids, there is a reason they do not have all the info when they are born. It is our job to worry and to stress, and to make sure our kids have the opportunity to be kids. Let their imagination grow, let them think for a short while that they can eat the blueberries off the bush, let them see the caterpillar grow into a beautiful butterfly after eating an icecream cone, let them laugh at all the silly places to eat green eggs and ham.
Let kids be kids.

I feel sorry for the children that grow up in such a closed off environment.

It's a humor column C.Howard. A joke in other words.

I pity the child that grows up in such a sanatised environment. If all you give a child is a censored and selective reality only view of the world then how are they to exercise that other important part of their being, their imagination. In life things aren't perfect, bad things happen, and other animals do not hold the same parenting values as humans and most other mammals do and in fact nowadays a lot of humans don't either. Learning about things that are not quite normal and not always nice gives us the tools to take these things in our stride as adults. We grew up before 'hand sanitiser' and with Grimm's, Oscar Wilde's & Hans Christian Anderson's fairytales and lo and behold we are still alive and well and relatively unscathed. But I also hold true to one of my favourite quotes from George Bernard Shaw "Do not do unto others as you shall have done to you as their tastes may not be the same." So you raise your children in your world without fairytales if you chose and I'll raise mine in my world with fairytales, altered realities, dirt, mud, grime and imaginative worlds and characters and all. And with that I'll take the curly questions that I get thrown and know that I may have helped a person to develop a sense of resiliance and a strong imagination.

...is this for real?