5 Lessons Picture Books Teach Us That are (Sadly) Inaccurate

Foods Have Rich Inner Lives
Whether they’re forming friendships with other tasty treats in Peanut Butter and Cupcake, or learning to eat their sweets like an obedient vegetable in Little Pea, foods in children’s literature often have agency, sentience, and confront a lot of the same problems that kids and adults face in their own lives. The fruits and veggies in How are You Peeling? express an astonishingly wide range of nuanced emotions, and the friendly face-off between Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast over who gets the last drop of maple syrup is as relatable as it is ridiculous. Foods: they’re just like us! They get jealous, they laugh, they cry, they make and lose friends. Also though, we eat them, so subtle differences remain.

Alligators (and Crocodiles) Are Everywhere
While real-life encounters are rare, and usually far less heartwarming, in the world of picture books, alligators (and the occasional crocodile) are all around—and they’re not just hanging out with each other bursting balloons and making macaroni like they do in Maurice Sendak’s nutshell library classic. Kids bring them to school for show and tell in If You Ever Want to Bring an Alligator to School, Don’t!; they turn up in bathtubs and become indispensable members of the family in The House on East 88th Street. Alligators even attend ballet classes in Dance is for Everyone, and take the metro to work in a shirt and tie in Professional Crocodile. Kids’ books had me convinced that as an adult I’d have at least one reptilian coworker, neighbor, or dentist, but thus far I have been disappointed. For the truly obsessed, here’s a roundup of even more books featuring our favorite literary ‘gators and ‘diles.

Simple Disguises Fool Everyone
In the classic Harry the Dirty Dog, a sweet white dog with black spots roams the city, playing in mud puddles and construction sites until he is so dirty that he becomes completely unrecognizable to his own family. You’d think his hapless owners might have put two and two together—“Hey, has anyone seen Harry? And what’s the deal with this strange dog the same shape and size as him and covered in coal dust who keeps hanging out like he belongs here? Oh well.” It’s not until Harry insists on the children giving him a bath (another obvious clue, no?!) that his true identity is magically revealed. In the subversive Miss Nelson is Missing, a mild-mannered teacher pulls off another confusingly easy hat trick, taming her unruly class by dressing up like a witch and pretending to be an evil substitute teacher so the kids realize how good they had it before. In kids’ books the lesson is clear: it doesn’t take much of a disguise to fool everyone. No wonder I worried my own mother wouldn’t recognize me when I dressed up as a cat for Halloween.

Cars and Trucks are Cuddly
While as an adult it would never occur to me to hug a car or snuggle up to a crane, I can’t blame my toddler son for wanting to try, because the vehicles in the stories I read him are so irresistibly cuddly. Whether it’s Little Blue Truck, with his wide, friendly eyes, or the cheerful equipment in Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site, transportation has never seemed as approachable as it does in the land of children’s literature. It’s a magical place where buses always stop, horns beep to express a friendly greeting rather than deep-seated and probably misplaced road rage, and tractors are as soft and comfortable as overstuffed furniture. Imagine a world of transportation in which soaring gas prices, choking exhaust fumes, and blaring talk radio don’t exist. No wonder we all miss childhood.

Interspecies Friendships Abound
Frog and Toad are Friends, which is not so much of a stretch—but so are Elephant and Piggie, Wilbur and Charlotte, Kanga and Piglet…The list of very dissimilar animals whose relationships transcend all sorts of reasonable barriers (size, environment, appetite) is endless, and it fueled the keen disappointment I felt upon realizing, as I grew up, that pigs and spiders in fact have zero interest in hanging out together—and that for animals, the strongest dynamic is more along predator/prey lines. As a kid, one of my #squadgoals before there were #squadgoals was to have at least one talking animal in my squad. As an adult, I know that dream will never be realized. (But for the time being, I’m keeping that hope alive for my own kid.)