‘No wonder my children couldn’t sleep’: Rereading kids books’ as an adult

The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Just indulging in a bit of binge eating. Goodnight moon? That old lady in the corner is terrifying. Frances Whiting finds the funny side when rereading kid’s books.

Memory. It’s a strange beast. There are some books I read to my children years ago that I can still recite off by heart. I can remember every single word, for example, of Where is the Green Sheep?, Guess How Much I Love You, or any of the That’s not my puppy/kitten/fairy/truck/dinosaur picture books.

By the way, I have it on good authority from current parents of toddlers that they have just about exhausted all options in that particular series, and we are a whisker away from That’s not my paperclip.

But despite knowing all of the words from all of these books, and many more, if you asked me what I did yesterday afternoon, I could not tell you.

I could, however, tell you every single thing the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate during his binge eating episode.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar needs to take it easy. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Because, as a colleague pointed out yesterday, that’s pretty much what was happening between those pages.

That caterpillar munches its way through an apple, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges, some chocolate cake, an ice cream, some pickles, some cheese, some salami, a lollipops, a cherry pie, a sausage, a cupcake and some watermelon before finally stopping to eat one “nice green leaf” and apparently feeling much better.

The adult equivalent of this is going on a massive weekend bender and then doing a juice cleanse afterwards out of guilt.

Either that, or this book should be renamed The Very Pregnant Caterpillar.

Revisiting children’s books when you are older means looking at them through a different lens, and perhaps none more so than I’ll Love You Forever, a tale of a mother’s love for her son and the lovely song she sings to him throughout his babyhood and toddlerhood and childhood years, into his teenage years and, eventually adulthood; “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”

Delightful, until perhaps the bit where the son has grown into a man, moves out and the mother catches a bus in the middle of the night, BREAKS INTO HIS APARTMENT, to sing the ditty to him while he sleeps.

I used to read that to my own son and think “what a lovely mother”, now I think “what the hell is wrong with you?”

The little old lady in the corner? Terrifying.

Then we have Goodnight Moon, another children’s classic and a bedtime favourite.

It tells the tale of a little bunny going to sleep in its room and saying goodnight to all the things in it like the clock and the kittens, and the brush, and the mittens and the LITTLE OLD LADY IN THE CORNER WHISPERING “HUSH”.

Dear God, no wonder my children couldn’t sleep at night. She’s just there. In her rocking chair. Watching. Waiting. Hushing.

And then there’s Snow White. The truly terrifying tale of a woman who has to look after not one, but seven middle- aged men: Doc, Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful, Happy, Dopey and Grumpy.

It would never happen now.

Or would it? Because a mate of mine who is on Tinder says that these days they would just be renamed – Jock, Sketchy, Needy, Creepy, Sleazy, Boozy and Handsy.

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Originally published as ‘No wonder my children couldn’t sleep’: Rereading kids books’ as an adult