I recently read a review by a university professor slamming a children’s picture book because it depicted unsafe actions by the characters. I won’t say what the books is because I happen to love it and so do the children I read it to. It makes them laugh.
A lot of that laughter comes from the slightly uncomfortable, if unconscious feeling that what’s going on in the story shouldn’t and probably couldn’t happen. In other books there is vocabulary that we might not use, again soliciting uncomfortable giggles.
Wouldn’t you say that’s the beginning of critical thinking?
My message: