Forward.com

Museum MadnessMuseums are hit and miss with young kids. Josie, at 6, was enthralled by the Superheroes exhibit at the Met last summer, but Maxine, 3, was less enchanted. (She hung from my arm and wailed, “I have to leave this boring place or I am going to be dead.”) Last year, at William Steig Storybook Family Day at the Jewish Museum, Maxine had a blast designing an illustrated book with me at a crafts table, but when she spotted the guy in the massive green Shrek costume, she let out a shriek of mortal terror and clung to me like lichen. Both girls tolerated the Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum — bright colors! Cuteness! The promise of a flower-shaped plush happy face pin at the gift shop! — though Josie and her friend Lila exploded in giggles at the statue of a huge-knockered woman jumping a rope of her own breast milk. Thankfully, the kids were oblivious to the nearby statue of the young cowboy whirling a lasso made of semen. I hadn’t read up on the exact content of the show before taking the kids. (And then I collected my parenting medal.)
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A Serious TalkJosie, my second grader, came home from school the other day with a book she’d borrowed. (I’m not bragging, but she’s plowed through her classroom’s entire library, so her teacher sends her to third grade for books. Okay, I’m bragging.) When I noticed it in her backpack, I blanched. It was a Holocaust book — “The Night Crossing,” by Karen Ackerman (Yearling, 1995). I’d never heard of it. The cover showed a little girl, clutching her dolls, looking wide-eyed and terrified as Nazi flags loom behind her. Uh oh.
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Finding Balance in the Season of BirthdaysIn our house, the end of Yom Kippur means the beginning of the hell that is birthday season.
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