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[Image description: Illustration from ‘Rain!’ by Linda Ashman and Christian Robinson. In the illustration, a young child with brown skin tries on an older white dude’s hat. The man is shocked to see the child mocking him, wearing a frown and shouting “You!”]

This season, we’re exploring bias against older adults and teaching our kids to identify harmful assumptions about age

This article & book list is a part of the anti-elder ageism series. Start from the beginning: Why Young Activists Depend on the Fight for Elder Rights.

 

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Only You Can Prevent The Arrogance of Mediocrity

My five year old enjoys explaining things to me. His brain has spontaneously combusted with imaginary facts, taking that “anything is possible” nonsense, transposing it to mean if he can imagine it, it’s a fact.

Which sounds very….post-truth. Everything about social media, climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and our government makes more sense now. No one told these bloviated windbags that no matter how many times you repeat bullshit, that doesn’t make it true.

Somewhere along the line, this five-year-old decided he had the authority to give me instructions.

He tells me how to gently turn the pages of a book. He tells me how life started on earth. (Aliens. He’s firm on this.)

It started out cute. I’d nod and smile and be like “Oh wow. Really? Aliens, you say?”

Now it’s just annoying. He tells me how to cut his apples, how to sweep the floor, and how I should wear my mittens. Sometimes he insists I stop and re-do it his way.

He’s starting to notice that he’s the littlest in the family, the littlest in his school. He can’t reach the sink, he can’t tie his shoes, he can’t pronounce his own name, but everyone around him can.

The whole world bosses him around and tells him what to do. Letting him bullshit me about aliens makes him feel confident. Speaking with authority on things he knows little about makes him feel smart and capable and in control of something.

This new discovery of the world + quest for confidence + me humoring it = makes these kids a little arrogant

His older brother is seven, and the seven-year-old has recently hit peak mansplaining.

(At least I hope it’s a peak. Good gracious it’s awful.)

We parents don’t do anything right. His teachers are in his way. His classmates play all wrong. No one knows how to do anything, except for him!

That angst! Thick with condescending sighs, frustrated whining, and eye-rolls – normal for seven. But the paternalism – that’s concerning. While he could maybe grow out of it on his own, I’m not gonna leave that to chance.

I see my part in this. I played along pretending he’s the smartest person in the room when he was little. In kindergarten, it was fun and adorable. Now that he’s huge, and it just comes off as arrogant and rude. Time for us to cut that nonsense out. My bad.

As the folks raising this next generation of kind and brilliant humans, it’s our job how to prevent the arrogant, mainsplaining nonsense of mediocre white dudes. Of all folks with privilege who blow smoke about why they deserve power, but are not responsible for sharing it.

It’s time to teach our kids about intellectual humility.

Unpacking saviorism & arrogance with kidlit

In this book collection, we’re teaching our kids to identify, name, and analyze microaggressions that target and denigrate people with lived experience. Kids getting all paternalistic toward people with decades of expertise. NICE AND OBVIOUS. Let’s explore youth saviors!

Practice #1: Watch your language.

First – let’s look at the ageist language we toss around on TV, kid’s media, and casual conversation.

When I type words like batty, poor, doddering, foolish, and frumpy into Google, ‘old‘ is the first word that auto-fills the search.

• Poor old dear – she’s just confused.
• Don’t mind Grandma, she’s stuck in the past.
• She’s such a Sunday driver.
• What a sweet little old lady!
• Must be having a senior moment!

Feeble. Frail. Brittle. Forgetful. Cranky old coot. Greedy old biddies. Senior moment. OK Boomer.

As the years pass, we internalize some nasty bias against our future selves. No wonder we see getting older as a problem. No wonder we try to avoid it.

No wonder we sub-divide ourselves as we age to avoid identifying as ‘old.’ If getting ‘old’ means our voice gets turned down, tone-policed, and overlooked – who would want that?

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Practice #2: Stop excusing bigotry

We excuse denigrating language against older adults because we believe in fallacies of equality and model minority myths. This is a tool of oppression that keeps us complicit. We believe we’re punching up against people who hold power over us, when we’re really punching down.

• If we maintain the idea that older adults are wealthy and powerful, we don’t have to examine how we’re complicit in their oppression.
• If we view older adults as burdens on society who suck up resources that could go to better use (re: younger people), it’s easier to deny them support.
• If we attribute bigotry and unreasonableness to a person’s age, it’s easier for us to write off valid demands for equality from anyone based on their age.
• If we perpetuate myths that older adults are confused, helpless, fragile, and incompetent, it’s easier for us to ignore their directions on how to help – and decide we know what’s best for them. Saviorism!

As we discussed in the last article on listening to #OwnVoices Olders, stigmatizing older adults because of stereotypes about wealth and power further disempowers multiply marginalized older adults.

As Alice Fisher counters in Old White Men, those old white men decimating support for older people with disabilities aren’t regressive because they’re getting older, they’re bigots despite getting older.

Practice #3: Presume competence

Oppression requests that we see those with less power as incompetent.

Ableism requires that we treat people who need support as lesser because they need help. As if being interdependent is a moral failure, rather than an integral part of building strong communities. Ableism and ageism – those two are buddies. So watch out for that.

As if we didn’t get help getting here. (Who changed your diapers, buddy?)

We treat older people – particularly older women as if they’re ignorant and incapable. Calling them sweet and adorable is just bigotry with a smile. This trope de-fangs powerful women whose strength lifted us to this place. Tearing down older women with that nonsense takes us all out at the foundation. Sexism! Ageism and sexism! They need each other.

It takes time to learn patience, to hold space for multiple voices, to reflect on what we’ve gone through and use it to inform our actions. These are strengths. But bias against older people – and anyone with experience navigating complicated situations, tells us that these strengths are a weakness.

Showing up for rallies is not / contributing your hard-earned pay is not / painting visions as a goal to strive for is not / collecting coffee and eggs for struggling parents is not / raising courageous leaders is not / the same thing, but they all reach for the same progress.

Poor activism looks different than wealthy activism. The activism of a single parent raising two kids looks different than the activism of a child-free, young college student. Young activism looks different from activism cured with age.

We cheer for the explosions because that’s all we see, but we need slow burns. Older adults have valuable stuff to bring to the table. We need all kinds of work. We need all kinds of leaders. So it seens uniquely ironic that we remove older adults from leadership, force them to retire, and nudge them into silence because they have too much experience.

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Finding better ways

Back to those Little Earthquakes of mine. The ones who are getting a smidge too arrogant for my tastes.

We have ways to build up our kids’ confidence that don’t involve pretending they’re smarter than we are. We have ways to empower them, help them feel capable and strong, without pretending we’re incompetent.

As parents and educators, we must be careful to value their contributions and affirm their awesomeness. Just not falling into the lazyness of letting them use someone else (even us) as pedestals. If you need to start that, read books with them about leadership, about celebrating how unique they are.

And if you’re feeling up to a challenge – read them the books below as cautionary tales of how our society insists we build kids up at the expense of older adults.

Saviorism is, Abuse is, Oppression.

Ageism is the root and fruit of ableism, sexism, poverty, and all that crappy stuff. If you wanna smash these things, you can’t leverage ageism to lift everyone up.

Oppression is systemic abuse. Abuse is about maintaining control over a target. Oppressors have the power to spin the strengths of targets, making that strength look like a weakness. The oppressor creates the rules and values about what is ideal, and what is flawed.

Once bystanders see a target as incompetent, it’s easy for abusers to say “We know what’s best for you,” to take control, to escalate.

Creating the illusion that targets are incompetent allows abusers to disguise our abuse as support.

We’re gonna take a hard look at our language – yes? We’re going to examine the inside of our guts, ask ourselves why we use ‘old‘ as a qualifier for when what we really want is to use the word ‘shitty.’

We’re gonna do the hard work of examining why young people are entitled to relief from pain, social support, opportunities for employment, education, and housing, and why we believe older adults are not entitled to those same things.

We’re going to presume competence. Older adults can take care of themselves. But we’re no longer going to treat power and equality as if it’s scarce, as if it’s something we need to take from someone older.

And we’re going to discuss what we’ve learned with our kids.

To make this easy, let’s start with adorable picture books with good intentions.

Which I am about to ruin for you.

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Unpacking Youth Saviorism: Discussion Questions

As we go through this next series of books where older adults are depicted as incompetent buffoons, discuss with your kids:

• Who is centered? Who has agency and control?
  • Who has problems? Who solves the problems?
• Who is depicted as stubborn and cranky?
  • Who is depicted as smart and vibrant?
  • Does the story give external reasons for these dispositions, or are we to assume this is the character’s natural state?
• Why does the older person need a young person to help them? Why couldn’t they have solved the problem on their own?
• What does it teach us about older people that they couldn’t come up with this basic solution on their own?
• Who is a burden, and who is a hero?
• Why did the author make this book? Who did they make it for?
• Who is hurt by this book?
• Does this book make you look forward to getting older, or does it make getting older seem scary and sad?

There are books out there that celebrate interage relationships and interdependence with respect and mutual support – which we can talk about in a future article. The books below are not those.

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Silly Tilly’s Thanksgiving Dinner

Tilly is completely incompetent.

The maker chose to depict her as a mole with huge glasses and a puffy white hat. Both of my kids confirmed – she codes as old and blind. Bigots like to use animal coding as a way to benefit from stereotypes because it’s not about an older disabled person. But it is. These stereotypes hurts older people and people with disabilities. You know it, I know it. The kids know it.

Tilly can’t hold a thoguht long enough to do any small task. Instead of accomodating her disabilities and offering support, everyone goes along with it, and things happen to work out serendipitously. I’m sure there’s a shortcut word for this trope already, but I don’t know it. So let’s just call it the Mr. Magoo trope.

This trope shows us that people with disabilities & older people are too stubborn and ignorant to seek help or work around their disabilities, and this makes them a liability for the rest of us. While things work out in the end – because this is kidlit and comedy – it’s just pure luck, but stresses the heck out of all the ‘regular’ people around them.

Story: Old and disabled people are a burden. At best, they can get lucky, and we can have a few laughs watching them bumble. But really, we should be managing them because they can’t manage themselves.

Oh right. Since this is a Thanksgiving book, there’s also the whitewashing.

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The Last Place You Look

There are so many great things about this book, undermined by this one shitty trope that just wasn’t necessary. So this one is complicated.

There’s an okay attempt at an inclusive holiday get-together. Our two lesbian grandmothers, Bubbie Ida Flora (depicted as feminine, with white skin), and Bubbie Rose (depicted as leaning toward masculine, also white) host a Seder dinner. There’s a bald white woman (her role is unclear), a person accompanied by a guide dog who codes as Blind, a child wearing a dress, long curly hair, and a headband who uses he/him pronouns, another child who uses they/them, some token people of color and a few multiracial families.

The illustrations are a little wobbly and unfinished (everyone looks like they are wearing flesh mittens). But you got some folks with darker brown and lighter brown skin. Some beige. I appreciate the effort, as books about Jewish holidays often leave out people of color. However it’s important to note that the book depicts the hosting grandparents as white, with only white or multiracial children of white people wearing kippas. The guests of color look like they married in or were…invited. It’s not quite Get Out-level obvious, but I kept searching for hints that the darker skin tones had some agency and didn’t find any. This is a problem, what with the great whitewashing of Judaism in kidlit.

But yay for normalizing lesbian grandmas! And a Blind character with agency who helps search for the afikomen! And a couple gender-non-conforming kids! And vaguely including/tokenizing people with alopecia and/or going through cancer treatments! (Unclear!)

Per tradition, Bubbie Ida Flora breaks the afikoman (Passover matzah) and hides it. All the young people spend an inordinate amount of time and effort searching for it. Because it turns out, Bubbie forgot where she hid it.

Actually, she didn’t even hide it, because she completely forgot to even do that, despite standing up and walking away from the table to do just that. Because she’s old! And old people forget things that happened just a couple minutes ago. So flighty, these old ladies. (/sarcasm).

It wouldn’t be an issue – if this wasn’t an intensely common trope that pops up over and over. Grandma is always the source of the humor in these stereotypes about ‘senior moments,’ and older adults are always butt of the jokes.

It seems light-hearted. Not a big deal. Until you realize how many older women are discriminated against employment, fired, forced into institutions, and refused medical care and life-saving support because they’re dismissed as batty and forgetful.

This shit is killing women. Stop.

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My Grandma’s A Ninja

If you are wondering, based on the title, if this book is culturally appropriating Japanese culture for some laughs, then yes you are right, they did a racism. Oh also everyone is white because of course they are.

Beyond the orientalism, which goes exactly where you think it will go (“Grandma made dinner instead. It was raw fish. It was horrible.”), Grandma tries to be a ninja. Pearls on her neck, chopsticks in her hair, carrying a handbag through the whole thing.

Hijinks ensue, because older women? Being active?! HA! What a ridiculously silly idea! (This is also sarcasm.)

Playing off the stereotype that older adults are by default weak, unable to learn new things, and grandmas are boring, this kid’s grandma learns karate and is good at it. We’re supposed to be surprised and amused by this.

But don’t let it get too far – Grandma is also not particularly bright, and she’s disruptive and kind of a burden to have around. Like, the makers couldn’t just have a laugh while denigrating older women and Japanese culture, they also had to add in another layer to remind us that even the best and most active older women are still kind of shitty at everything.

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Old Befana

From Tomie dePaola, the maker of Strega Nona, one of the better depictions of older women, comes this shallow and unpleasant tragedy of an older woman navigating a disability without support, doomed to spend eternity searching for baby Jesus.

Silly old lady, she can’t tell that it’s been thousands of years and she’s looking for baby Jesus in vain!

This story just wouldn’t have the same charm (re: marketability) if a young person made this mistake. It’d be kind of sad, really.

I get that it’s based on an Italian legend. But we don’t talk about Santa Claus as if his generosity is a mistake. We talk about him like he’s a hale and healthy hero! Because he’s a man who ages well (we’ll get to that chestnut in a later article.)

The original tales of Befana are sometimes tragic, sometimes a moral lesson – but all of them include some complexity and depth to the woman. She’s not just batty and tragic for no good reason.

In this depiction, she’s wrestling with a compulsive disorder which makes her a harmless, but useless, person in the community and a bit of a village fool.

Sanism and ableism, always good for a laugh to make readers feel better about themselves. Unless we’ve got these conditions, in which case, the JOKE IS ON US. But it’s okay, because we’re not valuable humans due to our silly compulsions. Right? Why fight for equality, for folks to stop abusing and killing us, and for accommodations when we could just have a sense of humor about it. (/Bitter.)

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Mr. Tempkin Climbs a Tree

The young protagonist in this story is obsessed with his friend’s age.

It feels like one of those white people who talk about me being Chinese all the time. Yes. We get it. I am your token friend/co-worker/family. Talking to me while adeptly avoiding the use of most slurs makes you a better person. A Not-Racist Person. Ugh. (It doesn’t.)

This kid kicks off every conversation with “How old are you?” or some comment about his age. He relates every single thing this dude does to his advanced age.

The moral of the story is – hanging out with older adults is a gift that young people must bestow as a good deed. Young people are tasked with saving older people from a  miserable life of peace and quiet and not having young people constantly othering them.

The kid asks weird comments about how being old must be hard. Not because of like, the medical model of aging, hostile bigotry in public and business environments, or medical negligence. Just being old. The natural state of tragic oldness.

The author goes on to perpetuate stereotypes about the bland, inactive, and navel-gazing life of older adult. He spends his days smelling roses, walking, listening to birds, and hanging out with this child. These are “the things that keep me going,” which I guess he needs due to the tragedy of not being young.

There’s no deeper story about mindfulness or having had decades to learn what really matters. The reader is left to read bird-listening and flower-gazing as boring stuff left for older people who are boring.

Despite being active, optimistic, handsome, outgoing and vital gentleman who might want to talk about stuff other than his age, we’re supposed to see Mr. Tempkin as man past his prime, just puttering around, getting himself into things he can’t extract himself from, waiting to die.

The climax begins with the kid telling this grown-ass man that he is ‘too old‘ to climb a tree, as if Mr. Tempkin is too ignorant to know his limitations. This is all a set-up to prove the kid right. This foolish, benevolent old man! He falls out of the tree. Of course he does.

We had an opportunity here. When Mr. Tempkin decides to adjust a bird feeder, and the kid is  like “aren’t you too old to climb a tree?” and Mr. Tempkin is like “nonsense.” This could be a turning point where this kid, being so obsessed with this guy’s age, gets a TWIST. We could have learned how older people know their own bodies, strengths, and limitations.

But NOPE. The steaming hot and stinky moral of this story is that older adults need supervision, rescue, and “Climbing trees is not for old men, and I guess I’m just a foolish old man.”

The book goes downhill from here – he can’t push his own wheelchair and the kid offers to help, making the kid ‘a mensch’ as opposed to ‘a decent freaking human who does the very basics of assisting a friend who asks for help.‘

(I go into more detail on the problems of setting the bar for ‘goodness’ so low as letting an older woman get on the bus first over here.)

“Dad says that spending time with Mr. Templin is a mitzvah” I wonder why the makers tell us whether spending quality time with a good friend your own age could also be a mitzvah. (I don’t really wonder. We all know it’s because this author thinks hanging with older people is an act of heroism, not a mutually beneficial friendship of equals.)

Also see: Say Hello, Lily, which contains more of that ‘being around old people is favor’ plus a nice heap of gerontophobia and the message that all older people belong in nursing homes. Eventually Lily realizes that older people are people too! It’s a icky combo of terribly boring and terribly condescending, toward readers of all ages.

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Children coming up with blatantly obvious solutions for older adults

This next pile of books exposes the myth that older adults need young people to come in and rescue them.

Mr. Posey’s New Glasses

Older Adult’s Problem: Depression.

Youth Savior Solution: A clean glasses wipe.

The Moral: A few levels to this, and they’re all disgusting:

The first is that an older man spent decades on this earth wearing glasses and never once thought to clean them off when they get scummy – he needs a young kid to realize they are dirty and need to be cleaned. Because we’re supposed to see older adults as…not very smart.

Which is supposed to be a metaphor for how we need fresh, young eyes and energy because older adults are too stuck in their ways to be creative or innovative. Great set up for employment discrimination and ignoring calls for equality from multiply marginalized older adults!

There’s also some stuff in there about Mr. Posey not enjoying new experiences, but the young kid is more open to them. That old trope about old dog, new tricks. Which is bullshit.

Also older adults get depressed, not due to say, social discrimination, but internal forces. And that depression is somehow easily overcome with an injection of Fun Kid Energy (TM) because older adults are too forgetful to remember how to cheer themselves up and depression is so easy to overcome if you just tried harder. Sanism!

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Mrs. Greenberg’s Messy Hanukkah

Older Adult’s Problem: Obnoxious neighborhood kid wrecking up the place, a la Dennis The Menace.

Youth Savior Solution: Good intentions.

The Moral: In a relationship where the younger person is Dennis-The-Menacing all over the freaking place and breaking your shit and destroying your house, it’s okay. Because older adults are just so desperate for companionship they will settle for friends who take emotional labor, time, and destroy their home.

Also, intention matters more than impact. (NO! BAD! BAD LESSON! STOP TEACHING THIS TO WHITE GIRLS!)

The idea behind this story was decent (making mistakes, forgiveness) but it’s just so sloppy, and way, way better done in the book The Borrowed Hanukkah Latkes. In Glaser’s story, the older women is not positioned as pathetic and lonely, and waiting for a youth savior to spice things up.

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Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge

Older Adult’s Problem: Dementia.

Youth Savior Solution: Souvenirs.

The Moral: Dementia can be solved, but only by young people with Fun Kid Energy (TM). Probably only because the people experiencing it, the younger adults caring for them, and modern medicine is too incompetent to figure out how to overcome dementia without a youth savior.

Also if your grandparent is experiencing memory loss, confusion, or any of those scary things that come with dementia, expect great and immediate results. Perhaps, if it doesn’t work, youth saviors aren’t trying hard enough. Or perhaps great-grandma just doesn’t love you enough. Who knows!

As the author so pitifully writes ‘Poor thing.‘ Like suffering is acceptable and empathy isn’t an option. Just pity older adults. And wait for them to die.

Seriously, what the actual F was this author thinking? Way to set everyone up for despair.

Adding this to the loooooong list of books that teach kids dementia is common and inevitable for all older adults (it’s NOT.) There are some great books about how kids can understand illness and support a loved one with dementia – which we will talk about in a later article.

Meanwhile, us this to see how very unlike regular people older adults are, and how surprising it is that they might have memories of doing things (but only when they were young). Such othering! Much stereotypes! So pathetic!

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The Visitor

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City Green

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Three Cheers For Catherine The Great! and Stolen Words

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Rain!

Also see: Floaty, for another inexplicably grouchy older man rescued by a dog.

Older Adult’s Problem: Bad attitude & general curmudgeonlyness.

Youth Savior Solution: Mockery.

The Moral: Be a dick to older people. That will cheer them up.

This list is going to get harder as we go on, because we’re getting into the books I actually like. I adore Christian Robinson, and Linda Ashman’s books are often inoffensively solid in validating childhood challenges.

We actually read this book frequently to the kids, it’s particularly wonderful for the 4-6 age range when kids start to see every inconvenience as a grave insult and injustice. I like that it normalizes a kind and gentle boy of color. It helps us unpack the concept of perspective – how we have agency in seeing the things that happen to us, choosing our response to it, and how that informs what happens next.

But okay, here we go. This older man. He’s so grouchy. Why is he so grouchy? We don’t see how maybe, his dog died. Or his wife died of cancer. Or how he just got laid off from his job ‘to make room’ for younger (re: lower paid) employees.

He’s just grouchy. And that’s a problem – because the Grouchy Curmudgeon is a trope in kidlit that needs to die. It’s a stereotype that we grab when we’re too pressed for time (or lazy) to come up with scaffolding or back-stories on what causes an upset person to be upset.

For those of us who have been dismissed because we’re ‘getting too upset’ – due to our gender, our race, our disabilities, whatever, we recognize the way our identities are used to silence us when we have very valid reasons to speak up. People aren’t just naturally grouchy.

I mean sure, my default disposition is slightly to the left of irritable, compared to say, Santa Claus. But also Santa is a rich white man who grew up beloved and believed in despite multiple facts to the contrary…wait I’m just proving my case, never mind.

I mean to say – we can’t teach our kids that some folks are just grumpy and need to get over themselves. The solution isn’t to be super-duper cheery at them, nor is it to mock them until they get a sense of humor and catch up to the youths. We need to listen and then work for radical change that gets to the root of that curmudgeonlyness (this is a word now, I’m making this a word and you can’t stop me.) Or at the very least, hand the man his hat and just leave the dude alone.

If you know it’s rude to tell a strange woman to smile, ’cause she looks prettier that way, then you can see how expecting this guy to cheer up to make everyone around him happy is kind of problematic.

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My Two Grannies & Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup

Older Adult’s Problem: Cultural conflict and the inability to reconcile the validity and wholeness of a biracial identity.

Youth Savior Solution: Symbolizing a biracial person and their identity as something objectifying. Say, a casserole, perhaps.

The Moral: Older people are too fixed in their ways and against racial, cultural, or ingredient mixing. Only young people can come up with some super obvious solution like fusion cuisine.

Okay I said this was gonna get harder. Remember how, in this collection, I recommend Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup because we can food stories to teach kids that not all Asians are a monolithic and you can own all of your identity even if both sides don’t want you? (Spork is even better for this.) BUT also there are problems with it. We’ll address this below.

What we’ve got here is a helpful, and lazy, device, where authors use stereotypes against older women – perpetuating the idea that they’re bossy, stubborn, and ignorant. And they need the help of granddaughters to show them how to do…really basic things like accepting that two ingredients can mix.

Which, honey, grandma knows. Either grandma is on board with having a mixed grandchild and is in the picture and loves the crap out of you, or she’s like “Ew. No.” No cooking class can fix prejudice.

Oddly, the male version of My Two Grannies (My Two Grandads, branding!) includes two grand-dads who collaborate and respect each other. The men in that multiracial family are less bickery and snipey, and less arrogant and rigid. Sexism and ageism! Partners in crap!

Other moral, aside from ageism: Biracial people like two whole things, cut in half or with pieces scooped out, then mush together whatever is left over. Like a centaur. Or a snake with the head of a human baby. ::shivers::

Like, for instance, this pervasive problem where monoracial people keep writing books and speaking like they know stuff about navigating life with a multiracial identity. Which perpetuates problems and makes things worse.

(Spork was written by a multiracial person, btw. JUST SAYING. Read Spork. It’s so good.)

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A Plan For Pops

Older Adult’s Problem: Psychological impact of suddenly living with a permanent physical disability

Youth Savior Solution: A ramp.

The Moral: Older adults who develop physical disabilities are doomed to a life of despair without outsider help.

I’m getting picky on this one – only because I love this book soooo muuuch. Gay grampas! Multi/transracial family constellations! Nonbinary character who uses they/them pronouns! So lovely! And it’s all marred by a couple issues.

The first part of the book is gold – both Grampas are depicted as vibrant, interesting, and fun. They’ love their grandchild, Lou, but they don’t need Lou to entertain them. They have independent lives and taste. So sweet, and so nice.

But the dig is when one of the Grampas has a fall, and gains a permanen physically disability. Grampa is shook, which I get it – that’s a big life change to deal with. But the book wobbles a little toward disability as a life-ending flaw, which is pretty ableist.

From there, the gramps can obviously build a ramp themselves. But Lou does it for them, and that magically cheers up their depressed grampa. Which minimizes 1. What a big life change it is to go from abled to living with a disability, and how valid it is to need time to process that, and 2. The fact that grampas can come up with obvious logistical solutions on their own.

The ramp is a metaphor – I get it. A symbol of love and accommodations, and support. But because this book could swing either way, depending on the reader, it feels a little lazy. I will spell it out to my kids that grampa’s despair is about a life change, not because having a disability is a bad thing. I’ll also point out that obviously someone was going to build a ramp, and it’s the show of love and innovation that cheered grampa up, not the physical ramp.

But will casual readers?

So read this, enjoy it, and please be cautious to unpack the ableism and ageism kids will pick up if left to come to their own conclusions.

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But seriously though you should still read the book, the rest of it is flawless.

 

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Coming up next

Next in this series about ageism – we’ll examine stories about older mentors and how these stories give kids a grasp on humility, patience, and the importance of learning from lived experience. Without swinging the pendulum all the way into childism.

• Why Young Activists Depend on the Fight For Elder Rights
• Believing #OwnVoices Elders
• Problematic Stories of Youth Saviorism Stigmatizing Older Adults
• Older Lives Are Worth Living: Fighting Ageism & Deathmisia In Children’s Books
• Anti-ageism kids books featuring intergenerational friendships

 

Leave a comment with advice, ideas, and your own stories of nonsense youth saviorism