Parents, children, teachers and everyone who loves to read, take note of Charlie McKessey’s multimillion-dollar bestseller. Boy, mole, fox and horse ready for inclusion in the national curriculum.
If you liked the book, you are not alone. Given its phenomenal sales, it’s likely that you own one. You may have seen the Oscar-winning adaptation shown on BBC One last Christmas. And now all schools will receive a range of text-based resources to teach their youngest students.
The story goes like this. The boy depicted in the beautiful drawings meets the mole. They say. The couple encounters a fox caught in a trap. The mole frees the fox. All three meet a horse. They talk about kindness, fear, love, friendship and cake. They are together. The book ends.
Those who enjoy McKee’s work say it teaches compassion and self-acceptance. Those of us who don’t really like it might say: Yes, the drawings are beautiful, but each page reads like the greeting card you send to a friend when you don’t know what to write.
But whether I like the book or not doesn’t matter. Millions do it, and apparently these resources came about because teachers promoted them. We need our children to read; British statistics are terrible.
According to the National Literacy Trust, in 2023, fewer than three in 10 children said they read every day, and the situation is getting worse. Since 2005, the number of children reading during their free time every day has dropped by 26 percent. And half a million children in Britain say they don’t own a single book.
But Boy, mole, fox and horse is not a book for children – it started out as an inspirational Instagram account for adults. And by including it in the curriculum, we convey to our youngest and newest readers that this is a good children’s book; a long story that lacks the momentum of a decent story and does not contain jokes that children will find funny; A book that does not understand or accept what it means to be a child.
Or to put it another way: It’s easy to sit in a field with your animal friends and say, “One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things.”
This is especially sad since we live in a golden age of children’s writing. The best children’s books, written directly for a target audience, are those that embrace and celebrate children in all their anarchic, fun, and unstoppable glory.
Mackesy’s followers, some of the most ardent I have ever met, tend to believe that anyone who dares criticize the book is against the very concept of kindness. It’s clear; This is work that has brought solace to many. But in the context of raising children, this is a real problem.
So I fear for six-year-olds who find the book’s length, lack of narrative text, and handwritten text distressing. date Boy, mole…Because of their status as saints, these children may mistakenly believe that all children’s books are written this way.
And I fear that a child who dares to demand more from reading, who finds this book dull, banal or just a little dull, will be perceived as an intellectual and emotional failure.
These tools can be useful for children’s response to text and, I suspect, equally important for the enthusiasm of their teachers and parents. But for kids who don’t really like it, for the love of literacy, please give them something written just for them.
Would you like to read to little children about their big feelings? Here are five brilliant alternatives to Boy, Mole, Fox and Horse.
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Celebrate the joy of sharing with friends by shouting things like “NINNY TNIKERS.”
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George the dog tries his best to behave. Unfortunately, his best results are not always enough.
An anxious girl with a big problem discovers how to talk beautifully.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.