Are You My Mother?
Product Description
Illus. in color. A baby bird, fallen from his nest, sets out to find his
mother.
Amazon.com Review
This is the classic from which many of our staff first learned to read, starting us on a path of unremitting bibliophilia. Are You My Mother? follows a confused baby bird who’s been denied the experience of imprinting as he asks cows, planes, and steam shovels the Big Question. In the end he is happily reunited with his maternal parent i… More >>
I know that my review will not please a lot of fans of this classic, but…
I have to say, this book’s message is pretty out-dated, and rather insensitive to many modern families. The baby bird goes up to various animals asking, “Are you my mother?” The answer is invariably, “No. You are a bird. I am not a bird.” What kind of message is that for a child? Many children today do not look like their mothers at all!
A much better story is A Mother for Choco, about a little bird who wanders around, going up to every animal that bears some sort of resemblance to it. In the end, it decides to live with Mrs. Bear who is also raising an alligator, a hippopotamus and a pig. To me that is a much more beautiful message for children: that a family doesn’t have to be people who look alike. A family is just people who love each other.
Rating: 1 / 5
Many of you, “Parents”, have exposed this book unto your families. Same thing with my mother. She exposed this story to me. But you know what I see in this book of evil? Scary images and ideas. Look at the dog for instance. Does he look like a “nice” dog to you? He didn’t to me. He scarred the buttons of my shirt. Everytime I look at his eyes I fill with fear. But the idea of being seperated from your parents of the worst fear factor. AND in addition. NEVER EVER EVER BUY THE VIDEO THAT GOES WITH THIS BOOK! It has bizarre music that will stick in your childs minds while the sleep and haunt them. I had many nightmares about “Are You My Mother” and your kids shouldn’t. NEVER BUY THIS BOOK!
Rating: 1 / 5
This story is amazing and much more complex than the hobbit. Compared to the hobbit, it is an adult novel that ties in a story of perplexion, and a psychological journey. The little goes on a quest for a deeper self-understanding. The hobbit is a rip off of this book. (Dorothy Matthews is stupid)
Rating: 5 / 5
This children’s classic blithely written from an adult point of view, makes light of a baby bird’s terror when he realizes that his mother is absent from the nest when he hatches. The plot, the baby’s quest for a parent and identity in an increasingly technological and impersonal world, climaxes when the baby plaintively asks a machine (the snort) if IT is his mother. Though the bird mother, identified as such by her scarf and handbag, reassuringly reappears at the end of the book, the reader is left shaken and uncertain of the future of the nest which is the Twenty First Century.
Rating: 4 / 5
First, let me say that I learned to read from this book. When I was a kid I knew all the words and I loved it! But then again, I didn’t know any better, and frankly, neither did my mom and dad. I was lucky in that the book applied to me: I looked like my mom and dad and therefore the message of the book, that your mother is the one who looks most like you, was seemingly harmless.
Now, however, I have an adopted son and am friends with many other families created through adoption, including lots of families with children of different races. The message of this book is really inappropriate for those families and even though my adopted son happens to be physically similar to me, it’s not a message I want him to hear, either. Families don’t have to look alike to be family!
One of the earlier comments mentions A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kaska and I think this is a MUCH BETTER book than Are You My Mother for ANY child, not just a child in an adoptive or transracial family. The message of that book is that your mother is the one who mothers you…not necessarily the one who looks just like you.
Rating: 1 / 5