A Children's Book Review - WARNING! Not Hydroponic

 

This blog is a mix of technical hydroponic information and general commentary on the foibles of humanity and other amusements, more of the former than the latter. This one is one of the humanity ones. If you want, feel free to go on to the next post, which will be a hydro topic, or standby the new post coming soon, which will also be a hydro post.

I like children’s books. Though I have no children in the home nor grandchildren, there are some charming and some almost alarmingly frank works for young children. Land the artwork is often special. Absent any children to read them too, I will from time to time, talk about some of them here. It’s a nice break from  writing about hydroponics.

I warned you there would be posts like this back on 4 November, 2021. If you missed it, here’s the relevant part:

“Some smaller number of posts will be commentary on the foibles of humanity and other things that amuse, amaze or distract me. But you’re reasonably safe, because I don’t do politics. In seven decades, I’ve seen it go round and round, and the merry-go-round is dizzy enough without me throwing sticks in those spokes. And not to worry. Like the merry-go-round, if you just stand there in one place, the ride you want will come back around. Other than that, I can’t predict much what those non-hydroponic posts will be.”

I suppose you could call this a book review. It’s certainly about a book, a children’s book. But it’s nothing to do with the technical quality of the book or the adept writing. It is very much about what it seems to try to tell people about a serious problem that the book not only takes lightly but, I think does some harm. I’m a liberal, but not a dogmatic one or a very weepy one. I understand the other side, too. But this rubbed me wrong.

The book is titled, The Lady Who Lived in a Car. It is written and illustrated by Suzzana Hubbard, and I readily admit I am doing Ms Hubbard an injustice here, but I can hardly separate her and her book from the negative connotations of her theme.

 

In this story, Miss Lettuce, a lady of a certain age, lives as we would expect from the title, in her car. On the street in an unnamed city. The two children who tell of Miss Lettuce think the world of her and recount that she and her little dog were once with the circus and that she traveled as a dancer on a ship and fell in love with the handsome captain.

Miss Lettuce does not say how she came to be living in a car, but she says she wouldn’t change that for all the tea in China. She keeps the car trunk full of enough colorful hats to match all her moods. She is delightful and happy, and there is not a cloud in her sky.

Except for a gentleman in the neighborhood who thinks ladies should not live in cars. He starts a campaign to get her to move to a house, “the sort that normal people live in.” In a silly plot twist, Miss Lettuce challenges the gentleman to a series of rather ridiculous contests, things like can-can dancing and pea soup eating, the winner to get their way. And of course, she wins, and Miss Lettuce gets to live happily on in her car.

In my world and very likely yours, a great many people live in their cars. And in tents. And in cardboard boxes. And a sad number of them die or live short lives because of it. Homelessness is a horrific problem, with admixtures of misfortune, despair, mental illness, physical illness and very, very little hope as someone most people pity but would not to be want around.

Their lives are not joyous. They do not spend their days amusing happy, clean, healthy children with their colorful hats, charming stories and tea parties in the back seat of the car.

The book is aimed at pre-readers, quite young children. Children who, if their parents buy them books, probably see little of the misery of street life. Other than Miss Lettuce, it will likely be some years before they even become aware that there are people who must indeed live in their cars.

So, The Lady Who Lived in a Car might be, for some of them, an introduction to homelessness. And the account of happy Miss Lettuce strikes perilously close to the cowardly parental lie that those people really “just like camping out.” And that is both sad and a bit infuriating.

I said I admitted that I might be unfair to Ms Hubbard. She says on her web site that she modeled Miss Lettuce on a woman living in a car in her city of London. Perhaps fortunate London does have women of a certain age choosing to live happily in cars because they want to live in them and have no interest in doing otherwise and not because their lives have come crashing down around them. But that is not the world of children growing up in the United States today. The problem of homelessness is so difficult that it is almost certain that the children to whom the The Lady Who Lived in a Car is read will become adult citizens still facing the task of finding a solution.

They will have need of every bit of empathy and reality that their parents’ guidance and life can instill in them if they are to muster the determination to confront the problem. And the prospect that they might somewhere along the way harbor a view of the homeless as carefree, clean, healthy amusing people who wouldn’t have it any other way borders on frightening.

There are excellent books dealing with homelessness for children. A Place to Stay: A Shelter Story. The very insightful Shoebox Sam. The lovely Sam and the Lucky Money. Contrasting with The Lady Who Lives in a Car is the touchingly accurate (and tragic) A Shelter in Our Car. And the situationally dated but heart-wrenchingly current Fly Away Home.

Parents, choose well, and teach them in the way they should go.