Growing up in today's America.

As a parent to two small children, I do one of the many thing all parents do - I read books to my kids.

It's inevitable. If you want to encourage kids to read and learn, you have to start by reading to them. I also think it's important to also supplement that with telling them stories, in addition to reading them.

One of the great things about books by Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry, is that by using animals instead of people, they took the racial element out of stories and lessons being taught to kids. They may not have always been consistent, and I may not have always agreed with the lesson being taught, but I largely thought it was a good idea to separate cultural elements from actual lessons.

And yet, in reading the new crop of books prevalent in today's America, I'm astounded at how much more 'whiter' the worlds these books send children to, really are. Lots of color, not just so much in the main character.

Increasingly, everything is written from the perspective of Caucasian females. Sure there are males, and yes there are non-white characters, but doing this is what I call being more liberalish - i.e. branding of characters to appear liberal to a primarily white audience.

The other even more disturbing thing is how increasingly emasculating these books also are. It's amazing how much connection there is between these books and product advirtisements, and shopping malls. Males (both boys and men) are treated as dolts, oafish, and often wrong. Conversely, females (specifically girls) are either well-behaved and 'wronged', or snobby and 'right'.

I guess I should not be so surprised - most children's books are written by white women, from a white perspective and largely for girls. Nothing wrong with that by itself, if it weren't for the following -

Must they always do so with concious and sub-concious digs at males (boys and men)?
Must they always be so white (how come not other races)?

And even when a lead character is male (Harry Potter), he's often impotent and silly. He needs female characters to help him address problems.

In these books, a strong smart boy or man is absent.

Some recent examples -

• Fancy Nancy, Super Why - the white characters are the leading ones. They have non-whites, but they are always secondary. Why? Just pointing that out is in and of itself an example of Caucasians creating a 'liberalish' environment really for themselves, not all people.

• I came across a spider book/cartoon - and it was rather sad to see the women/mommies are the dominant source of all that is right; and the male adult characters either stupid, or subservient.

• Serendepity - fictional innocent righteous sea creature is a 'girl' man-handling (literally) evil bad fishermen. And of course men are the ones destroying earth and sea in these books.

What kind of message does this send to boys, apart from 'You're whipped and deserve to be put in your place!'? Maybe that's not the message I want my son getting.

What kind of message does this send to girls? - You go grrl. You know it's alright to encourage girls to be smart, and strong, but arrogant and snobby?

Some more sad examples -

• The princess meme, for example. Little girls should be placed on a pedestal over everyone and worshipped because they are sweet and innocent and holier than thou (just a bunch of moral superiority bullshit).

• Or even worse, the 'fairy' syndrome, where girls are held up as magical, special and power, while boys are usually clueless or stupid, while any male always are secondary, wrong, or both.

Does this mean in order for my kids to get any kind of perspective of the world other than a white female version, I'd have to write my own books? Who has the time to do that?

Though  ... it occurs to me I should not be so quick to judge. Maybe I should stop and consider that my kids are people too, they can think, they can act. Perhaps I should listen more to them?

Ultimately I have to realize that a book is a book, and that - by itself -  reading it isn't as important as talking about it with my kids, and listening to what they say. This is something I need to do more often.

While the solution is to pick better books, and let my children know that 1) I don't always agree and support all the books there; and 2) explain to them why, I should never lose sight of the bigger picture - as their parent and father, it's up to me to provide the the best example of how to be in life.