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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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askchapo
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No pictures, but kid friendly: Terry Pratchett. His discworld is great, and it was fine for me to read as a 12-year old. He has some weird anti-activist brain worms, but they only really show up around Nights Watch, and honestly I'd start my kid out with Diggers! I think you could read that to your child from like age 7 or so.
I'd also recommend the hobbit. It's not leftist, but it's not lib either, it's a good kids book and it's anti-war. The climax is Bilbo stopping the battle of the five armies.
Antoine saint-exuperys "The Little Prince" is also a must. No overt politics, but anti-war, anti-this-world-we-live-in and very heavy on compassion. If you haven't read it either then get on it.
When I worked with kids we'd have story time and I'd tell them about leftist heroes. I reshaped Ned Kelly to be a sort of Robin Hood type. If you can find a good Robin Hood book, then I'd recommend that too. There's lots of retellings.
My parents didn't try to make us radicals, but me and my bros all read LOTR and the Hobbit at a young age, it doesn't hurt the socialist development for sure. I'd say any books that describe how the US lies to maintain it's murderous military dominance. Raising a kid with ideals like love and kindness, sharing, respect for different types of people and cultures, then showing them plainly how awful the US is, is probably a good way to put them on the right path.
One of my key points of turning away from the patriotic ideal boy was reading a Scholastic book about US wars. Revolutionary War, WW2 made sense, but they got to the section on Vietnam and basically said "we lied to get into the war, and then massacred villagers for a few years because we hate commies. We also shot American college students because they got mad at us. God Bless America!"
Also don't watch Disney. I credit my parents refusal of Disney material to help me develop properly as well.
Except for Robin Hood.
Otherwise yeah, i think I agree. Kids shouldn't be started off with political theory or overt political fiction. they should start off with compassion, love, beauty and adventure. I credit large amounts of my radicalisation to two concepts I learned at a young age: Compassion is a core part of being human, we need to be kind to each other and the world is a beautiful place, we need to preserve it.
It's basically Kringsat Av Fjender, an old norwegian song