Given the dad-centric tone of this entry, I probably should have posted it yesterday, but c’est la guerre.
With both of my kids now into their diminutive double-digits (a Rubicon I was sad to see them cross, if I’m being honest), the evenings wherein I read to them are fewer and further between. Charlotte, my eldest at 12, is a voracious reader by this point, prone to pulling books at random off our shelves when she’s run out of her own selections. As such, she’s as versed in works of Agatha Christie as she is in J.K. Rowling. At 10, Oliver has yet to catch that particular fever, but has a few stand-bys he’ll happily page through, although they usually involve LEGO in some capacity. I’ve also introduced him to the myriad joys of Asterix the Gual and Marvel Comics, both of which certainly acted as gateway drugs-of-sorts for me towards more adventurous fare when I was his age. Here’s hoping that works for him, as well.
In any case, prior to the organization turning my life into a roiling, daily morass of paranoia, shame and mental flagellation, my former job at TODAY.com had me occasionally write about parenting, and back in the deceptively placid days of 2012, I wrote up a dewy-eyed ode to reading to my kids, dubbed Bedtime Stories: 6 Children’s Books Best Read Out Loud. One of the selections I cited was P.D. Eastman’s canine classic, “Go, Dog. Go!” But as much as my kids and I continue to love that particular book, there’s always been one aspect of it that mystified me. I’m talking about the ongoing hat exchange, obviously.
Should you be unfamiliar with the narrative in question, it’s basically a series of vignettes wherein a female dog asks for validation and approval from a male dog in regards to her choice of headwear. No, I know that dogs don’t generally wear hats, but let’s remember … this is a children’s book.
But as a children’s book (albeit one first published in the arguably not-as-enlightened era of 1961), the message this particular thread of the otherwise-largely-nonexistent plot sends is puzzling. Not only is the male dog in the exchange somewhat needlessly brusque and rude, but the depiction of the female dog repeatedly seeking his positive acknowledgment isn’t something I’d ever want either of my children to emulate.
To this point, I recently discovered an amazing post by a writer named Raquel D’Apice. For a blog called The Ugly Volvo, D’Apice has penned “An Open Letter to the Female Hat-Wearing Dog from ‘Go, Dog. Go!’” It hilariously speaks refreshingly to my above concerns, and is well worth your time.
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