Golden books were popular when my girls were little. You could pick them up at the grocery story even. In a brilliant marketing move, grocery store owners put these little revolving book-stands in the mid-section of the store. You hit them just about the time your child was thoroughly bored with shopping, tired of shaking the cereal box and had not reached the produce section yet.
Being a book person, my two daughters had quite a collection of little Golden books. However, the ones I remember are the ones my mother picked up for them.
Mom is a ‘white bread’ person. She wants her onions and potatoes diced to within an inch of their life, no lumps in either the gravy or mashed potatoes and white bread with a light crust. Yes, please do not laugh if you see me, at the grocery store, pulling out loaves of white bread to check for the lightest crust delivered that day. That means I am shopping with mom.
Me, I like my food spicy, chunky and alive. Mom likes everything in the world to be ‘pretty.’ That includes stories also.
So, every Golden book my mother bought for my girls were well edited. If there was a character named Melissa, that name was blacked out with marker, and the appropriate girl’s name was written in. The big bad wolf became the misunderstood canine and never a tooth was bared. Little Red Riding Hood never got lost in the woods but was merely out picking flowers. My oldest daughter still has some of those Golden books and they looked like the CIA got hold of a state secret document.
Mom still fights the fact that life is not always ‘pretty.’ I just think that ‘pretty’ can be awfully boring and a book is never good without a really nasty Antagonist.
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