Lately the administrators I work for - the superintendents and principals - have acquired a taste for picture books that tout a message. Not a subtle theme, mind you, but a heavy-handed "message" we're all suppose to swoon over or something. One recent picture book our superintendent drooled over was The Invisible String. I don't remember the author's name, but clearly this was one of those message driven books that teachers and administrators like and kids clearly don't. The book was about our interconnectedness. Certainly a good theme - a great one even - but kids don't want a book that's all about a message.
Kids want stories that pull them along head first, head over heels - characters they can empathize with and laugh with, cry with, worry over. After 20 years of reading many books to thousands of kids, I know kids love good stories with believable characters, not books whose primary purpose is to send a message, to moralize, to edify. Nothing will make a child's eyes glaze over more than a heavy-handed message meant to educate them. As Samuel Goldwyn said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." Not that children's books shouldn't have a theme - they should - but the theme should emerge organically, subtlety from the story, the story where we worry about the characters and only later realize we also learned a little something in the process.
