The Defiant Ones

From The New Yorker, a good article about parents and discipline in children's books:

...the stern disciplinarians of the past—in Robert McCloskey books, parents instruct children not to cry—have largely vanished. The parents in today’s stories suffer the same diminution in authority felt by the parents reading them aloud...

The typical adult in a contemporary picture book is harried and befuddled, scurrying to fulfill a child’s wishes and then hesitantly drawing the line. And the default temperament of the child is bratty, though often in a way so zesty and creative that the behavioral transgressions take on the quality of art.

...

One of the best writers of contemporary picture books is Kevin Henkes, a Wisconsin artist, whose Midwestern good sense is paired with a cheery pastel palette. For the past two decades, he has been depicting families as amiable, orderly mice. Henkes’s clean lines give his dot-eyed creatures a machined, Hello Kitty cuteness, but their emotions are palpably human.

I met Kevin Henkes this weekend at an opening reception for an exhibit of children's book art. A very nice man.