Board of Education which stated (cue high school history: separate but equal is not constitutional). The children at the school Sammy attends for the day treat him like an equal - but also learn about differences that make them unique (seals can catch a ball with their nose, while little boys should not). Does that seem unusual compared to other books you’ve read with the child? What about knowing that it’s set in New York? At the very least, even if you don’t talk about this either, consider that it creates a very definite perception about the people who are “supposed” to go to zoos and eat at restaurants.
This may be an opportunity for talking with the child in your life about whether this is how the zoos they’ve been to look (or, if they haven’t been to a zoo, an opportunity to give them the creative freedom to describe things they think would make the animals happier, using knowledge they already have about those animals), and providing them with at least a few points about why zoos no longer look this way (animal comfort, breeding programs, trying to enhance the visitor experience, etc.).Įven if this isn’t something you want to bring up, another thing to address would be that all the characters in the book are white. To begin with, the zoo looks antiquated - think old steel bars, sparse enclosures, etc. That’s now how I’m talking about it here though, because I think it’s also important to consider the messages this book inadvertently sends, and what it means for the children who read this book more than 60 years after it was first published. Okay, yes, I should be reading this book the context of the late 1950s, when it was written. At the end of the story, Sammy decides to return to the zoo. People don’t seem to think it strange to see a seal wandering around downtown New York, so we’ll (mostly) take that suspension of disbelief, for what it is (but more on that in a bit). A zookeeper grants him the right to explore the city on his own, and Sammy has all sorts of adventures - including going to school.
The basic premise is that Sammy the Seal suffers depression because he wants to know what the world is like outside the (Bronx? Central Park?) zoo. You may remember this book from your own childhood (I remember it from mine) - or perhaps you’ve already read it to your children. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to read Sammy the Seal by Syd Hoff (1959) to an elementary school student.
0 kommentar(er)
