Forget it Jake, it's Busytown

Post date: Jan 30, 2013 2:51:35 AM

Read this fascinating blog post today which suggests some people spend far too much time analysing children's books. Some very good points though, such as:

I return to a favourite topic: books for children and what they tell them (and us) about society, and especially about work. I continue to operate on the basis of an anecdotal hunch, not yet supported by a systematic and quantitative survey of the literature: namely, that we don’t do this any more, that there is no longer a market for this kind of book: the comprehensive telling of how the economy operates, along with attempts to place the individual in it. This is not to say, as usual, that the accounts are uncomplicated, nor that they are ideologically transparent or sympathetic. But rather that it may say something that we’ve stopped even trying – something about the less visible, tangible nature of work, but also about our diminished capacity to understand and represent it.

And some interesting points about the near fascist nature of some of the imagery or the texts implications: