Tag yourself as a popular childhood picture book – for your very own personalised book recommendation!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
-addictive personality
-you read gone girl religiously at least once every year
-accidentally stalk too hard on ig and end up on your ex’s sister’s boyfriend’s cousin’s page
-falls down random wikipedia rabbit holes on the quest for knowledge
quote you relate to from the book: “On Saturday, he ate chocolate cake, ice-cream, pickles, swiss cheese, salami, cherry pie, one sausage, one lollipop, one cupcake and one slice of watermelon, but he was still hungry”
Winnie-the-Pooh
-are things going better since the ADHD diagnosis champ?
-big group of friends; adored by all
-big tee, small pant combo
-sweet as honey; you don’t finish any books because you hate endings
quote: “people say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day”
The Rainbow Fish
-mom friend
-you can’t put your finger on why exactly, but ‘The Giving Tree’ by Shel Silverstein makes you cry
-needs to work on setting boundaries
-you are in the closet but the closet is made of GLASS
quote: “the more he gave away, the more delighted he became”
The Owl and the Pussycat
-Oh, so you’re gay now?
-twisted sense of humour but people find you delightful
-highkey a simp
-Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is the altar at which you worship
quote: “O lovely pussy, O pussy my love, what a beautiful pussy you are!”
(you’re telling me they let children read this smut??)
If you got ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’: I recommend you peruse Chelsea G. Summer’s, A Certain Hunger. The narrator is funny and snarky and she delves into sex, food and the way gender is defined, all the while asking that pesky, age-old question: “why can’t women be serial killers too??” #representationmatters. For all you voracious little caterpillars: the language used here is absolutely delicious. She be using words like piquant (pleasantly sharp taste) and halcyon (past period of time that was idyllically happy) for you to add to your vocab library. The novel will feed your appetite for knowledge without being overly wordy or obnoxious. You can tell the main character is an asshole ala Joe from ‘You’ but she’s so well-spoken and sexy in the rationalisation of her wrongs that you let yourself be gaslit. Summer also describes food in a way that leaves you craving anything and everything her foodie main character consumes; whether it’s a simple red meat burger…to the flesh of the last man who wronged her!!
Some spoiler free quotes you might like to sink your teeth into:
“Men brought us the golden hits of war, genocide, rape, drones and football, so brutal women catch us by surprise. But our unshakeable belief in women as starry-eyed Margaret Keane paintings about the eternal sunshine of the spotless female mind? It is a wondrous, idiotic and drooling thing.”
“Love makes us do the wacky; it also makes us do the whacking.”
If you got ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’: I’ve been meaning to tell you by David Chariandy is a short novel for my short attention span girlies <3 Like A.A Milne, Chariandy writes in the same loving tone of a father hoping to make the world a little easier to navigate for his child. Thus, this partial autobiography might help soothe those daddy issues for you! It’s a deep dive into race and its intricacies written by a Black-Indian-Canadian English professor for his daughter, knowing that she will experience life in America differently to her white peers. Race often makes for emotional and difficult (though essential) reading material but framed as it is through the Romeo&Juliet-esque love story between his parents, and the funny and softly devastating scenes of a family, the novel is easy to speed through and will stay with you forever.
Quotes:
“My girl, you did not create the inequalities and injustices of this world. You are not solely or uniquely responsible for fixing them. If there is anything to learn from the story of our ancestry, it is that you should respect and protect yourself; that you should demand not only justice but joy; that you should see the vulnerability, the creativity and the enduring beauty of others.”
“But we’re both dessert people so we shared a big piece of chocolate cake. ‘It’s very good for you’, you giggled. ‘Chocolate cake is very, very good for you.’”
If you got ‘The Rainbow Fish’: I suggest Oscar Wilde’s short story: The Happy Prince. Not because you can’t tackle the longer shit, I just know you have 500 other things on that to-do list of yours. The angst has been strong in you since childhood so fuck it—why not embrace it? Without any spoilers (although it’s been out for 135 years) the themes include compassion, honour, love and sacrifice and I’m guessing those are morals you already hold close to your heart. After refusing to call the love between him and his boyfriend ‘perverse’ in his trial, Wilde was imprisoned. From his cell, he wrote, “God made the world just as much for me as for anyone else. Terrible as what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.” May this short story remind you to prioritise yourself occasionally, and honourable as it is, not to serve others to your own detriment. Set some boundaries chief!!
Quotes:
“Any place you love is the world to you.”
“‘It is strange,’ the bird said. ‘It is very cold, but I feel quite warm.’
‘That is because you have done a good thing,’ said the prince.”
If you got ‘The Owl & the Pussycat’: firstly congratulations on your superior tastes!! Why don’t you add to your ungodly rizz by giving some of Mary Oliver’s poetry a geez? Studies have proven that beezies love them some verses and you never know when you might be in need of a new tinder pickup line. Devotions is simple, to-the-point poetry that makes the point of not being wanky or pretentious. It is easy to understand and easy to love. Oliver’s pieces hit home and are full of important messages on ‘how to do life’. Wary as I am of sounding like a little bitch, her poems make me feel lucky to be alive. But I’ll let the quotes speak for themselves.
Quotes:
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, something better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
