Father Brennan’s Tales for Tiny Tots

By Rev. Gerald T. Brennan

Copyright 1954

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time blogging about lessons learned from books – many of them children’s books – it is that if the story is of good quality and engaging, there is no need to analyze the story for the children.  Rather, if there is a moral to the story, it should be subtle.  The child hearing or reading the story, if they are old enough to understand a lesson, is smart enough to figure it out for themselves.

That is where this book goes wrong.  Fr. Brennan has written a series of short stories that aim to deliver a particular lesson in Christianity.  The problem is, after the short story, Fr. Brennan goes directly into preaching a mini sermon.  The lessons to his stories are quite clear without his sermonizing, and I think his explanations are demeaning to children. 

One of the stories is titled “The Two Tears”.  Two tears went for a walk one day and got to talking.  They discovered that one tear was formed when a little boy lost a nickel.  The other tear was formed when another little boy found the nickel, bought ice cream for himself and proceeded to get sick from the ice cream.  Those little tears wandered along and wondered about that.  One little boy cried from the loss of a nickel while the other cried when he found the nickel!  A child may learn from this that sometimes people just can’t be pleased.  They think they know what they want, but when they get it, it’s just not as good as they expected, and that perhaps we don’t always know what is best for ourselves.

Fr. Brennan makes that message very clear.  He spends a page expounding the lesson by stating, “Take what God gives you and be satisfied…Learn to be satisfied with what you have, and thank God for everything…So, don’t complain!  Don’t grumble!  Don’t find fault!”

I say, give the child more credit.  Let him enjoy the story and then take from it what he is ready to learn!