What to Know
If there’s one thing that a lot of parents are well aware of, it’s that kids are basically extremely sponge-like, in the sense that they soak up every little thing around them. Some of that saturation you can immediately see bubble up to the surface while other things take some time to get sudsy and end up coming out in ways that you couldn’t even imagine.
A frustrated mom recently took to her TikTok to share a firsthand account of her daughter bringing home a book from school to read and she soon discovered a problematic message about food that she thought was harmful for kids to be reading. As a parent, have you come across any books or other forms of media that were legitimately made with children in mind, but they immediately gave you pause to the point that spoke to your child’s school?
This mom couldn’t help but wonder ‘Am I nuts?’ when she saw the overall messaging in this popular kid’s book.
A mom by the name of Fig who goes by the handle @shrimpyvampy shared a TikTok that some parents may want to make note of.
Fig shared that her 5-year-old daughter recently brought home a book from school called Queen Anneena’s Feast. While her little girl was reading it out loud to her, Fig found herself alarmed when she discovered where the story was starting to go come page five.
At that point in the story, one of the queens who came to a feast named Queen Teeny Weeny — yeah, that’s already a pretty sketchy name considering the context of the story — will not be eating. At that point, Fig decided that she needed to take the book from her daughter and finish it herself before she allowed her to read any more.
Throughout the book, Fig discovered that Queen Teeny Weeny was offered an array of different foods and in the end, all she ate was a single leaf.
Fig couldn’t help but ask the question, “In what world is that a good book? In what world are we perpetuating these harmful ideas that Queen Teeny Weeny only wanted one leaf to eat?” That is a very good question.
Shockingly, the contents of this book left a mixed bag in the comments section from parents.
Fig ended up sending a note to school for her daughter’s teacher to tell them that she would not be finishing this book because she found it to be a “very harmful idea for a 5-year-old” to read about.
The mom also shared that she couldn’t help but feel a bit confused as to whether she might be overreacting about the messaging it sends to children to depict Queen Teeny Weeny only eating a single leaf at a feast and refusing all sorts of other yummy foods.
While a few people in the comments section of Fig’s TikTok video thought that “it’s not that deep,” there were several people who totally got where the concerned mom was coming from.
One person shared, “No, that is insane. I was waiting for it to go to some sort of conclusion of how important it is to eat so you can have energy to play or something and then it ended like that??” Another person commented, “I’ve been a teacher for 15 years. Never seen that book before. I’m appalled!”
There were also a few other folks in the comments who shared that there are a few different versions of this book, so perhaps Queen Teeny Weeny’s problematic story was written out at a later date.
The mom gave an update on how her daughter’s school responded to the situation after she reached out about the book.
In her next TikTok video, Fig shared a bit of an update with her followers about how her daughter’s school dealt with this whole book situation.
Someone at her child’s school ended up calling her to thank her for flagging this book for them and they have decided to pull it from their library and reading roster, so no other child at school will be able to read it.
As a parent, she found it concerning how there were several parents and educational professionals who told her that she needed to “get over it” because it’s just a children’s book and it’s not that deep.
To that, Fig couldn’t help but share that “harm isn’t [always] perpetrated at once.” She noted that “oftentimes with something like an eating disorder, it’s a build up of things. Whether that be seeing the size of the celebrities in the movies that you’re watching or little comments in books like this from when you were a kid.”
Someone in the comments completely agreed with the point this mom was trying to make. “Very worrying that teachers and parents dismissing your concerns! A character in a book plus their young age can most definitely be enough to in this case start a young kid refusing food because they are copying the character,” they wrote.
If anything, this whole thing could serve as a reminder to parents to regularly check in with their kids and what they’re consuming because you never know what kind of potentially harmful ideas and messaging might pop up.
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