"Children tend not to enjoy hectoring"

From "Kids Deserve Beautiful Books":

By now perhaps you’ve heard that America’s children aren’t interested in reading and aren’t capable of digesting books befitting their grade levels. A litany of articles and national report cards testify to the crisis. But the fight for young minds is being lost even earlier than most appreciate and long before a child sets foot in a school.

The first frontier is children’s literature: chapter, picture and even board books. There are thousands of children’s books that train the ear in language and form the moral imagination, narratives that help children place themselves in the larger human story. But many are now hard to find, and most of the latest titles can be fairly described as awful. ....

American families do still read some good books to young children. But it’s typical now in bookstores to find children’s books browbeating kids about why Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a girlboss or how all the animals will soon be extinct because of human rapaciousness. One title I encountered recently at a store was about an ocelot separated from another cat by an evil wall on the southern border.

The nation’s most prestigious honor for children’s literature, the Randolph Caldecott Medal, once went to powerhouse titles like The Little House and Chanticleer and the Fox, the latter a spin on the Canterbury Tales. In 2024, the winner was an “emotional exploration of being big in a world that prizes small.” In 2021, the Caldecott went to a tale about how “water is the first medicine.” ....

The books aren’t compelling. They teach through lectures about self-confidence or managing emotions, instead of rich stories that stir a heart to ponder characters and lessons. Children tend not to enjoy hectoring, and who can blame them? ....

Alas, most public libraries have abandoned their role in providing equitable access to excellent books. My local library features staff book lists for children, and what’s on offer? Books on “divorce and separation”; books on “mindfulness for kids”; “Feelings: Shelf-Help for Littles”; “funny picture books to make you LOL.” There’s also a list dedicated to gender issues and identities for “younger readers,” including a book about a kid who “has always been a boy, even if the world sees him as a girl.” ....

This Christmas, I’m reading aloud to my family perhaps the best story for children ever written, published 75 years ago this fall: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I figured the falling snow outside was an evocative moment to invite the children to imagine a world where it’s “always winter but never Christmas.”

Wardrobe is a masterpiece precisely because it doesn’t hammer readers with a simple lesson or obsess over the inner emotional monologues of the four protagonist children, even as they encounter a sometimes frightening world. There’s more to absorb in that short story about emotional courage, justice and a healthy sense of identity than you’ll ever find in today’s hackneyed books for children. (more, but likely behind a paywall)

Kate B. Odell, "Kids Deserve Beautiful Books," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 22, 2025.