Are picture books held to a different standard than video games?

Sometimes!

Before we get to the mailbag:

We have totes for sale in the Looking at Picture Books Shop. Jon and I both have vivid childhood memories of visiting the library and loading up a big bag with picture books, and we made these bags with that in mind, although you are welcome to buy them and use them for something else.

Also, Jon and I each had pieces in Washington Post :

• Children’s Picture Books Are a Glorious Art Form [gift link]

• Interview: How Jon Klassen Wrote Books for the Most Inscrutable Audience: Babies [gift link]

For today’s post, Jon and I considered, over text, a reader question.
Paid subscribers can submit questions here.

MAC: Today's question comes from Negar Suffi. It’s mostly an incisive observation with a question at the end:

Here’s what surprises me: Despite parents’ desire to shield their kids from anything remotely unsettling, the reality is that this bubble doesn’t exist—at least not where I live, in Iran. A child here wakes up to their parents arguing, sees a car accident on the way to school, and hears news of war on TV.

Yet, these same parents will panic when they come across a children’s book where, say, a stone child gets thrown into a river by its stone mother—and on the next page, the stone child is perfectly fine (this is an actual story from an Iranian children’s book). They’re convinced this will mess with their kid’s emotions or give them nightmares.

What I find even stranger is how many of these adults have no problem with dark themes in movies or video games, but even a hint of darkness in a book terrifies them.

Does it come down to how they view books as somehow more personal or sacred? Or is it just the idea that children’s stories should always be “safe”? I’m curious to hear what you think.

MAC: I do think books are held to a different standard than video games and TV.

JON: Yeah. Often they are not allowed to be as flexible as those other formats. There’s something rigid in a lot of people’s expectations of books, children’s books, that is baked in pretty good.