I've been reading user reviews of Pija Lindenbaum books...

[kattahj]

...and people are idiots. I mean, wow. No wonder sparkly "Miss Fairy makes a new friend and learns that bullying is WRONG" books still exist, if readers like this get to make shopping decisions.

Comments

[therru]

Um... have they heard of the word "imaginary"?

The seven dads don't make sense because it's made up. It's not actually real. It's an imaginary story, with perhaps a bit more "imaginary" than usual. A lot of kids like strange and funny and imaginative stories. (Some don't, but that's a different issue.)

It's like criticizing the Pettson books because the cat talks. Does that make sense? No more than seven dads or befriending wolves, but it's such an old and commonplace trope in kids lit that the grown-ups don't notice.

[kattahj]

Yeah. There are ways stories can trip you up by not making internal sense - like how Goofy can talk but Pluto can't - but even then, kids tend to roll with it. And Pija Lindenbaum's stories have such a narrative logic and are so clearly either symbolic or paraphrases of fairytales, or both, that I'm baffled people still demand explanations. Oh well, takes all kinds.