August 17, 2025
A little while ago I was perusing the Youth Nonfiction aisle of the local library with my 9-year-old, when we realized that most of the books, particularly the series, seemed to focus heavily on violence and war. He was starting to get into reading longer chapter books, and while I don’t want to shield my children from some of life’s harsh realities, the amount of savage literature that was dominating the shelves could be considered inordinate and egregious for any of us to consume, young or old..
Roald Dahl wrote some amazing books for kids, as did Grace Lin, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and J.K. Rowling. All was fine when Harry Potter was being bullied by his own foster family, only to be whisked off to some mysterious, fantastical society of wizards, where he would basically be haunted throughout the next 8 books by an evil magical demon.
The key word though is ‘magic’, as the characters rarely use swords, guns or even fists; rather, Rowling decided that her characters could act upon the same sense of anguish, pain and aggression through charms and spells; weapons that could avoid piercing of the flesh and instead tap into a bit of folly, some whimsical fifth dimension, an alternate reality.
The story does get dark the further it reveals itself and this is not a literary review of the author’s masterpiece, but I guess more of a question: Why can’t we find our kids a little peace and calm in literature? Story books are great, but as children become stronger readers, the vast majority of the content available to them is equally as strong, but also carries with it an overwhelming amount of physical violence.
To say this is accidental is, well, misguided to put it nicely. It seems that in some ways we are training our little soldiers for a life of conflict, yes? I have no doubt in fact that a decent portion of American citizens would reply to this with a resounding “Aw, hell yeah!” But it’s not just the war machine that is pulling the strings of our consciousness, it’s the entire machine, wired to control the consumer, the reader, the scroller and even the theologian in all of us.
So if we want to cultivate a mindful, sensitive, compassionate existence for ourselves and for our families, I’m afraid the mainstream is not going to provide us with anything that is of much use. It may sell us a life full of crap we didn’t know we needed, but true comfort and inner peace are not on that menu. Those, along with certain degrees of imagination and fortitude, come from within.
Sleuthing
In a very small, rural American town’s library (I know because we lived there) you can find over a dozen biographical children’s books about Adolph Hitler; yet it will take you 2-4 weeks to have any copy of Gandhi’s autobiographical works sent to your local branch. Edit: This is also not a piece on the negative impacts of the glorification of violence and neo-patriotism in an increasingly jangoistic American society. All one has to do is simply look around to know that that ship has already sailed, probably right off the edge of the earth.
But this was in a relatively poor library located within a relatively poor town that seemed to possess a lot of “old world” views pertaining to socio-political policy and an often unchecked sense of guilt and aggression-based pain bodies that never seemed to depart from its collective consciousness. I’m hardly reaching into a bag of dishes or excuses here, just painting a sample-sized picture of basic social conditioning, albeit a gloomy one.
Back to today, we are in the library of a midAmerican town of about 120,000 people and decide to conduct a database search on all of the book titles that include the word “War”- the result: 22,285.
This sparked our curiosity, so we then searched for book titles that included the word “Peace”- the result: 998
Interesting. So we narrowed our search criteria: CHILDREN’s – FICTION – Book titles containing the word: “War”- result: 2,581
And book titles within the parameters of CHILDREN’S – FICTION that included the word “Peace”- result: just 1
It’s a book by Jill Murphy called 5 Minute’s Peace: a silly tale about how a mom is desperate to take a bath and a break from her children for a measly 5 minutes. Needless to say, this was a deflating and anti-climactic discovery. Good luck with the peace though, Mom.
Half and Half
Violence and war are not to be confused with conflict in its general applications; after all, most stories would not survive at all without this crucial literary device. But why and how can it continue to be this out of balance? My family and I, having already unsubscribed to the daily dosages of social media, a broken education system and just the general weight of a society that is burying itself from the bottom up, still managed to stand perplexed by these figures.
I asked myself: Are we actually being spoon fed this idea of systematic conflict for the unethical gains of an elite few? Or is this just history repeating itself over and over again?
The answer, on both counts, is unequivocally, yes. The reason why is that the obsession with greed, power, and wealth also repeats itself. The question of what the fuck to do about it, is either simple or catastrophically complex, depending on how you look at it.
The simple response goes something like this: follow the good. But the reality is that following the good may not be as effortless as one would hope. With the glass being half empty, an argument could be made that it is overly challenging to do this in a world filled with so much bad. Simple does not mean easy.
On the flip side, with the glass half full we could posit that there is so much good in the world and that we should alter our perception in order to uncover it; as if goodness were right under our noses the whole time, we just weren’t paying close enough attention. This may be partially true, but to be fair, what is offered right under our noses is usually just a whole lot of shit, particularly when it’s on a screen.
The “Half-Full” method has much stronger legs, can stand the test of time and it can take us places. But the reason for this is actually intertwined with the harsh truth of the “Half Empty” viewpoint, where there really is a lot of awful out there- quite enough in fact to have us exhausted and throwing up our helpless hands at any given moment, absolving ourselves from having anything further to do with anyone else’s bullshit. That’s easy, but if only it were simple.
Gooderall
So, then, like Indiana Jones, do we have to emotionally dig, weed, climb, fall, chase, be chased, tumble, root, turn, hack, flip and whip our way through this jungle of villainous treachery known as civilization? For us to follow the good, yes– we must then be relentless in sifting and fighting our way through negative influences that aim to penetrate our mental fortress. It can be an arduous process, but we know this to be true with anything that is actually worth doing. The more time, patience and effort that accrues, perhaps the more effort-less it will seem.
I’m sure there is a pill for this: “Gooderall” we could name it. But instead of complaining about the disparity of access to violent literature versus that of the peaceful variety, it may be incumbent upon us to start with Keyword Searches of good people, rather than “popular” Titles or Subjects: instead of Superman, perhaps we should be learning about Nelson Mandela; or, to take it a step further, let us absorb and really process Anne Frank’s writings, rather than “The Adventures of Captain Underpants”.
Perhaps the subject of “peace” itself is just boring and overrated, even though most of us would claim to wish it for the world. We might also say things like “I would die for my kids” without batting an eye; but would we lose 30lbs for them? Could we learn a foreign language with them? Exercise, quit drinking, play with them or even read more books? The first one, dying, is easier and requires virtually no effort in this hypothetical blueprint; but it’s sexier and dark, cloaked with the horror and dramatic flourish that inundates our consciousness.
We’re all looking for a creative and provocative story, but a) We’re not Bruce Willis; and b) Is the history of humanity not entertaining enough? Well, it’s really not if all we’re studying is who conquered who and in what year; this might get us through college history courses or a few rounds of Jeopardy, but the point becomes stale– So no, it’s not enough and we can all do better.
The history of humanity is playing out to the world 24 hours a day, every single day, in our faces, in real time; no wonder everybody’s sick. We get it: greed, power, wealth, all that stuff leads to bad behavior and negative consequences. So why then do we run our little private empires as if we’ve learned nothing from this idea? Perhaps we should prescribe “Historall” so we have a better understanding of what not to do.
The Indiana Joneses
We spend every day of our lives trying to keep up with the Joneses. I don’t think they are of any relation to Indiana, because if they were, life would look a lot different around the neighborhood: for one thing I doubt we’d have as many problems with obesity and heart disease, what with all the running from armed henchmen, escaping snake pits and tumbling out from under giant boulders.
People would certainly be more educated on the history of ancient cultures, languages, and customs if they were trying to keep up with the Indiana Joneses; and since the world’s rare treasures would likely be excavated and procured in a matter of weeks, everyone would soon become bored and start trying to “keep up” with a new popular adventurer…just please, please don’t let it be the Cardashians.
I don’t wish for everyone to start boycotting libraries until the numbers line up more fairly (although it wouldn’t hurt anyone to spend an hour or two a week there). Nor do I care if books about war are your thing, ahem, Dennis Leary. And I’m not ringing a bell for all peace-lovers to answer.
The point is this: we are writing the story. Life does not start and stop on a shelf full of dead trees and, eventually, dead authors, spilling out information about dictatorships, empires and massacres. If we think our children should be mindful, sensitive, empowered and compassionate individuals then we should concern less over their access to reading materials and instead, focus on ourselves being the heroes of their personal stories.
To put it simply, if we’re not happy about the lack of books about peace, then we should write a damn book about peace. Or better yet, live it and call it an autobiography. Either way, let’s breathe and stop trying to keep up with those who remain in the trenches; and for the love of God already, let’s put down the bloody iPad.