 |
| Book cover for "America: A Patriotic Primer." Illustration shows kids raising the US flag like they're at Iwo Jima. |
I bought this book for my son, America : A Patriotic Primer [affiliate link] by Lynne Cheney (wife of Dick Cheney). I was at an English-language used-book sale in Shanghai and I saw it and snatched it up. We live in China; where else am I going to find a book for him about what it means to be American?
This is structured as an alphabet book- each page has a letter, like "A is for America." I like that- my kid is in preschool and I'm really working hard on getting him to recognize the letters of the alphabet. ("What letter is this?" "I don't want to say it." "Oh, you don't know it?" "I know it but I don't want to say it. I just want you to read the book!")
---
It's not a preschool-level book but actually I like that
Each page has a very detailed illustration- you could spend a lot of time looking at all the things in these drawings. Also, the amount of text on each page is a bit much for my preschool-level kid. He doesn't have the attention span for that. Usually I just read the first line- like "B is for the Birthday of this nation of ours" and not the rest- "On America's birthday there ought to be 'pomp and parade,' John Adams, our second president, wrote to his wife, Abagail, and 'illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.'" My kid doesn't have any interest in sitting and listening to that. But I like how for now I can just read the first line of each page, and then maybe when he's older, or if he's particularly interested in a certain page, I can read more to him.
Some of the letters are big abstract concepts, like "E is for Equality" and "V is for the Valor shown by those who've kept us free." I don't think my son understands those.
And some are about historical figures- "J is for Jefferson", "M is for Madison." Important for Americans to learn about, but really boring for a preschool kid.
So basically, *I* like the content of this book, and I want my kid to learn these things, but he's not interested.
The part he was most interested in was a page that shows a map of the US, with various icons all over it, to show what different regions are known for, and there were several cow or buffalo icons in various places. He was SO HERE for those cows. He likes cows.
---
The content
I like the content of this book! It's a good mix of important American concepts, historical figures, and depictions of the diversity of modern Americans. From a feminist/ social-justice/ woke perspective, let me tell you that this book has "K is for King [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.]", "N is for Native Americans, who came here first", and "S is for Suffrage." I'm glad to see that this book includes the idea that being American is about fighting for rights for groups that have been discriminated against. Taking those abstract concepts about freedom and pushing this country to actually live up to them.
I had strong disagreements with 2 letters in the book:
- "G is for God in whom we trust." Oh COME ON. I told my son, this is ridiculous, the book shouldn't say that. I told him, Americans don't have to believe in God. Ugh. The text on that page continues with, "Freedom to worship as they chose brought people to America. Freedom to worship as we choose sustains our country today." So I can see that maybe they're trying to spin it as "freedom of religion is an important concept for Americans" but if that's the goal, it's been worded very badly.
- "Y is for You and all you will be in this greatest of countries, the land of the free." I told my son, LOLLL, the US is NOT the "greatest country." I told him, there isn't really a "greatest country"; everyone has different criteria they use to determine whether one country is better than another. (And honestly, for most people, "this is where I grew up, and all my friends and family live here" is the most important criteria. Which is fine!) I really don't like when people say "The US is the greatest country in the world," because it's always stated like it's just tautologically true. If people said it like "I thought through which criteria are most important to me, and I did research on many different countries, and my conclusion is that the US is the best one," and showed their work, I would be fine with that. But typically when I hear people say "The US is the greatest country in the world" they mean it like "We already know our country is the best, so we're not going to learn from other countries. We're not able to comprehend the reality that there are some problems that we have which other countries don't have. We're not even able to consider the idea that we could make our country better if we followed policies that other countries have."
But maybe this is good for him- it's good for him to see that just because a book says something, doesn't mean it's right. I don't want to carefully censor all his books and only let him read ones that I 100% agree with- that's just a bad strategy. Kids have to learn how to think critically and recognize that sometimes, something is not true.
---
Don't know where to put this in the review, but this book doesn't fit on my son's bookshelf
I need to warn you that this book is unusually wide, it's a big square 10.75 x 10.75 inches. It sticks out if I try to put it on my son's bookshelf. So I keep it on my big bookshelf instead.
---
Conclusion
I'm glad I bought this book; I really like it. My son is a US citizen who doesn't live in the US- how do I teach him what it means to be American? (If you have any book recommendations, let me know! Ah, I just realized that the keyword I should search is "third culture kids.")
I'm sure my son thinks it's super-boring, though. A lot of the content has no connection to his life- it's really abstract ideas, or historical figures he doesn't care about. Basically, it's the things *I* want him to learn about being American, but he doesn't really care right now. So I'm also looking for books about being American which are more interesting from a preschool-kid perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment