Some thoughts on Milly-Molly-Mandy

(I am having one of those days when words just keep coming out all wrong, so I apologise if this makes no sense whatsoever)
The school celebrated World Book Day last week by having a book fair and dishing out £1 voucher to all the kids. Apparently the school got 60% of whatever we spent at the fair to spend on books for the school. Something inside me wants to rant about why the kids aren’t getting free books to encourage reading etc but that is not the subject of this post.
So I took Littleone to the fair and she chose a book on extreme animals and we also came home with Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories which was more for me really because I loved those books when I was little. Coming to think of it, if I remember rightly my mum bought them for me because she too read them as a child.
I used to get excited over the little maps in the front of the books and so over the past couple of days I have been sitting with Littleone tracing my finger along the paths saying things like ‘Oh yes, that’s Mr. Blunt’s Corn Shop, where Billy Blunt lives!… and there’s the short cut to school,(but only in dry weather.)’ It was as if I had lived in that very village myself, along with Billy Blunt and Little Friend Susan, which in a way I guess I did, certainly if wishing was anything to go by.
Yes I lived out my little dreams in a bygone era when little girls could go roaming in the fields, exploring gypsy caravans they just happened to find there, when they could go riding with their friends on the back of their Grandfather’s pony cart, without their mother saying ‘Now only go as far as the end of the cul-de-sac and don’t talk to strangers.’ I also think my obsession had as much to do with what I thought were ‘pretty dresses’ worn by the women than anything else. (I knew nothing of the restriction of corsets)
It felt great sitting there sharing these stories with Littleone just as I had done with my own mother, that was until I got a couple of lines down on the first page, when I found myself reading out loud the following paragraph;

‘Father grew vegetables in the big garden by the cottage. Mother cooked the dinners and did the washing. Grandpa took the vegetables to market in his little pony cart. Grandma knitted socks and mittens and nice warm woollies for them all. Uncle kept cows (to give them milk) and chickens (to give them eggs). Aunty sewed frocks and shirts for them, and did the sweeping and dusting.’

Ouch!
Despite all this a grand part of me still wants to share the charm of these stories with my children yet now I feel the urge to say to her ‘This is the way it used to be but now things are different, we still have a long way to go but at least these days Mummy can grow vegetables (well if she had a big garden by a cottage that is, or just a garden will do, but I’m sure you get my drift) and Daddy even cooks dinner sometimes.’ But then I still keep having to remind myself that she is only three, and maybe I should let her have her gentle age of innocence without bringing politics into everything we read.
Maybe it is all about balance, as well as Milly-Molly-Mandy, we also read Princess Smartypants (a fantastic story of a princess who doesn’t want to get married and has to keep fighting off endless suitors) and her favourite TV programme right now is Mona the Vampire, who I think is a feisty, imaginative, independent role model, so I do approve of her.
When I used to read Milly-Molly-Mandy I would look back to an idyllic time that I thought had gone forever. With Littleone I hope to read these books and look forward to a time where we can take what is appealing about Milly-Molly-Mandy (the simple life, a return to nature) whilst still retaining and improving on all that has been achieved elsewhere.
Oh and as much as I love them, I don’t think I could cope with living with grandparents and uncles and aunties etc. *Shudder*