{"id":170,"date":"2018-08-22T14:35:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T18:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/?p=170"},"modified":"2024-08-23T10:18:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-23T14:18:27","slug":"stephanie-overanalyzes-childrens-entertainment-curious-george-and-the-bunny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/22\/stephanie-overanalyzes-childrens-entertainment-curious-george-and-the-bunny\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephanie Overanalyzes Children\u2019s Entertainment: Curious George and the Bunny"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a mother of 2 small children, I spend a lot of time around children\u2019s entertainment in many forms: movies, TV shows, songs, books, etc. Most children\u2019s entertainment is at worst mildly irritating while mostly harmless, and at best able to make you, a grown adult, openly weep from 2 rooms away. (Why am I never prepared for the end of Inside Out<\/em>? That movie WRECKS ME.) As I experience repeated viewings\/readings\/etc. of the same kids\u2019 media ad nauseam, I find myself growing overly critical of what is meant to be simple, innocent entertainment for small children. (I’m sure no other parent can identify with this.) I figured if I\u2019m going to be this sarcastically over-analytical about harmless kids\u2019 entertainment, I really should share it with the world. So I am introducing an ongoing feature for my blog: Stephanie Overanalyzes Children’s Entertainment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our first installment features everyone’s favorite trouble-making monkey<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Curious George and the Bunny<\/em> is a short children\u2019s book by H.A. Rey. It was given to my children by their Great Uncle Larry and Great Aunt Joyce. (Just thought I\u2019d give them a shout-out; not that they\u2019d ever actually read this.) It’s a favorite with my sons, but after hundred or so readings, I find myself taking issue with the central concept of this story.<\/p>\n

For those who haven’t read it… The book starts out with\u00a0George the curious monkey finding a rabbit house full of a mother bunny and her many babies. George wants to hold a baby bunny, so he takes one out of the pen and cuddles it. (Without the consent of either the mother or the bunny, may I add.) Then he decides he wants to play hide-and-seek, so he puts the bunny down, but the bunny immediately runs away. George is sad that he can\u2019t find the bunny and won\u2019t be able to return it to its mother. Then George gets the idea to let the mother bunny out of the pen, and he follows her to where she finds her baby bunny hiding under a tree. George takes them both back to the pen, and everyone is happy. The end.<\/p>\n

I propose this book should actually be called \u201cCurious George Cheats at Hide-and-Seek.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

Don’t let him fool you. This monkey does NOT know how to play hide-and-seek.<\/p><\/div>\n

Though the book explicitly states that George wants to play hide-and-seek, I\u2019m not convinced he understands HOW one plays that game. When the bunny runs away, George\u2019s first thought somehow isn\u2019t \u201cOh good, the bunny is running off to hide. As one does when one plays hide-and-seek. Which is the game I expressly said I wanted to play. I shall count to the appropriate number then scamper off to find the bunny.\u201d No, instead George immediately despairs he\u2019ll never see the baby bunny again. He leans into melodramatics, fretting that he\u2019s forever separated a beautiful bunny family. \"\"Instead of SEEKING for the HIDDEN bunny, George resorts to freeing the mother bunny and making her do his job for him. When they discover the baby bunny, the book says, \u201cbaby bunny was hiding in a hole.\u201d Uh, yeah. Baby bunny was correctly playing hide-and-seek THIS WHOLE TIME. Just as he was invited to do by that weird monkey way back at the beginning. Where y\u2019all been?<\/p>\n

By the way, that baby bunny is the best juvenile hide-and-seek player of all time. My nearly-4-year-old son can\u2019t even stay in his hiding spot long enough for me to finish saying \u201chere I come,\u201d and yet somehow this infant rabbit manages to stay hidden for God knows how long, patiently waiting to be found by a strange monkey who, as it turns out, WASN\u2019T EVEN LOOKING FOR HIM.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not really sure what the author was going for with this story. Is it supposed to be a story about George making a mistake and then dumbly yet sweetly making things right, as are most Curious George stories? Because that\u2019s not the lesson I see here. All I see is a story about George blatantly cheating at a popular kids\u2019 game<\/strong>. He asked the bunny to play hide-and-seek. He couldn\u2019t find the bunny. He got someone else to find the bunny. Cheat!<\/p>\n

Someone needs to explain to this monkey the rules of hide-and-seek. Cuz he\u2019s real bad at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a mother of 2 small children, I spend a lot of time around children\u2019s entertainment in many forms: movies, TV shows, songs, books, etc. Most children\u2019s entertainment is at worst mildly irritating while mostly harmless, and at best able to make you, a grown adult, openly weep from 2 rooms away. (Why am I … Continue reading Stephanie Overanalyzes Children\u2019s Entertainment: Curious George and the Bunny<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-overanalyzing-kids-entertainment","without-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa85Nh-2K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}