P is for Pussy: Just Who Are Children’s Book Written For?

P is for Pussy, the kick-ass kids book for adults too

Books for small children are one of two things, they’re either wonderful stories that have beautiful poetic assonance and are written for parents to read, or they are dull as anything and go something like ‘A is for Apple’. I don’t know about you but when my children were small our favourite books were not always the same, and this got me to thinking, just who are children’s books written for?

Are books for toddlers written for the toddlers who listen to the stories, or are they written for the parents who buy them and have to read them over and over? The perfect children’s books, The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, Guess How Much I Love You? and their counterparts are loved by both children and adults, but we still have to have a certain number of early readers around, books that are instructional and help with the alphabet and reading, and I have to confess these aren’t my favourite to pore over.

If you’re a parent, who wishes you could get a few giggles while you read, and likes a bit of subversive fun then ‘P is for Pussy’ might be just the book you are looking for! Writer Elissa Blount Moorhead has written the kind of book she wishes she’d had to read to her own children and has written a sophisticated ABC book that offers innocent fun for children, and subversive adult themes for the parent reader too. She collaborated with artist Meltem Sahin to bring her book to life with beautiful illustrations, that also work on two levels, to create an ABC book that kicks arse, kicks the idea of white-normative into touch, and plays on cultural context at the same time. Of course on a conscious level, all those things are only apparent to the adult reader, while the little tot in question gets a beautifully illustrated ABC book.