[notahacker]

Yeah. I'm not convinced settings for kids books really tell us more about urban planning than they tell us about the the problem with not enough political situations being solved by encounters with handsome princes these days. And I'm pretty sure that well established story tropes predate suburbanism and republicanism is more of a factor in the popularity of certain types of fantastical settings than magic kingdoms full of trolls being more walkable than the cul-de-sacs kids often grow up in.

It doesn't help that the author acknowledges that there are in fact numerous kids' books set in suburbs, he just doesn't like them very much. :D

[watwut]

The children's books actually show hansome princes very rarely. Those are featured in traditional stories, m but most children's books in bookstore are decisively not that.

What you call well established story tropes is not actual content of actual children's books.

[kaitai]

It seems to me that children's stories have actually changed quite drastically over the years and between cultures and countries. I read my child many old children's stories (say, published between 1930-1960 in northern Europe) and they are scarier and more fantastical and more.. earthy. Lots more casual death and violence between imaginary animals. One reason I keep reading them is that they are interesting and I think they provide better life lessons: now that I'm an adult, I read one somewhat violent tale of a little girl being led astray by a wolf or something (not quite Little Red Riding Hood but something like it) and I was like, wow, this is quite a sophisticated little story describing and naming grooming behavior that leads to child exploitation! This is actually useful, unlike (so many others).

Modern children's books often seem to be written as psychotherapy for adults. For instance, one children's book my kid loves is supposed to have as a lesson that being together with friends is the best thing and we should live in community, but most of what my kid has taken from it is that the protagonist penguin has the most fun while doing stuff alone and yelling "I can do it myself!" It's a pleasant enough book but I think the old stories of danger and foxes and rabbits and bears will stick more. They're all about houses on the edge of the forest... does that count as the suburbs?

[watwut]

You gotta be careful with interpreting the old stories. Many of them were not meant for 5 years old crowd. I honestly never thought about Red Riding Hood as grooming story.

I personally prefered new stories to my children. When they were small, the traditional ones were too long for their attentention span and my patience. And when they were older, it kind of turned out we find them more fun.

Anyway, we liked Hilda comic the most. You might like it, or definitely did not led to psychotherapy feeling.

[notahacker]

I understand JK Rowling's bestselling Ickabog has progressed to a character spurning the affections of the king in favour of a handsome Prime Minister ;) But I don't think there's much room for disagreement that princes and princesses are overrepresented in children's literature (and entertainment in general) relative to other forms of government, and that this tells us precisely nothing about these systems' respective merits. Similarly, I don't think characters in various types of children's books being likely to live in a wood, on the moon or against an unexplained primary coloured background tells us much about merits such environments might have over suburbs.

[watwut]

Those Rowlings are for adults.

And I would say that princes in kids litterature rarely represent goverment. They more of represent someone rich who have it all.