What Is The Moral Of Llama Llama Red Pajama?

There’s a kind of person who can be SO HARD ON THEMSELVES – and that person is The Good Egg. By reading the story of this Good Egg and how it grows from self-criticism to balanced self-acceptance, you learn a lot about overcoming your own flaws. My main takeaway is that cracks in things aren’t necessarily flaws: often they’re just evidence that you were trying too hard. And when I catch myself overcommitting, I remind myself that the good thing to do may be to just step back and breathe.

'Puff the Magic Dragon' is a love letter to impermanence. It doesn’t judge Jackie for growing up as much as it does Puff for hanging around as long as he did. Yet, it affirms that childhood, however fleeting, is beautiful in and of itself and should be acknowledges and played and and remembered by us children of grownups. This song always gets me in the gut, particularly at the line “Into his cave once more / Puff of smoke came out and there stood Puff, / No longer pink nor tidy nor bright.” In fact, the line gives me chills every time. Puff isn’t dead in this song. He’s gone into dormancy much like bears do every year. His time of play is over, but wonder is not. It simply awaits the next kid to come along or for that kid to grow up and remember. My take is that we should revisit our Puff’s from time to time – even if it’s just a memory we visit in our heads.

I see that there is a lesson to be learned here in the dangers of absolutes. Peter Pan offers the Darling children absolute freedom and absolute childhood, while Captain Hook is absolute control and absolute revenge. The Darling children are protected from the dangers of both men in their happy but somewhat strict home with its rules and mistakes and forgiveness. The moral is that life in extremes is dehumanizing. It is in the messy, moderate, human center of life that we find true life.

I read this as a book first after having seen the movie. The ending of the book had a much deeper impact on me, more subtle and focused on the emptiness of the characters left behind. The movie ending was very visceral and had an immediate impact on me but the quiet grief of the book had a much longer lasting impact on me.

Graphic stories, comic anthologies and even short indie komiks could also be explored. For one, the classic Filipino children’s stories ‘Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang’ has already been adapted into comic book form. Each of these short komiks is complete with a strong moral and can even enhance the emotional impact of the lessons learned in the stories through the visual element. A character’s expression can highlight an important point to be remembered. They offer a new, and very engaging, way to tell the same classic narratives.

The Fourteenth Goldfish is a story at its soul about childhood and its complexities and the consequences of adulthood. Ellie’s grandpa, having been turned into a teenager by science, becomes the focal point of an existential crisis that Ellie must face. Grandpa’s obsession with reversing his aging process leads Ellie to a realization that her grandfather’s search for eternal life may mean missing out on the best part of life right now. What made me laugh in this book was Grandpa’s grumpy-genius shtick. I never knew that a Nobel laureate could throw a fit about the quality of the institutional food served in a university. But in the midst of much humor, there is also much tenderness. Ellie has to learn Science with the same sense of wonder as ‘what if’ as she does with awe and responsibility. She’s not given any easy answers, and the questions that are posed are allowed to keep swimming, much like the Fourteenth Goldfish.

There’s ‘The Gift of the Magi’ by O. Henry. I read this in school long ago but I still get chills thinking about this particularly lovely short story about a young couple who each lose their most prized possessions in order to buy the perfect Christmas gift for the other. The moral, that love is greater than any material possession and that true gift-giving comes from selfless sacrifice, is powerfully conveyed through a beautiful story and perfect irony, leaving the reader with a very warm and bittersweet feeling long after finishing the story. One of my favorite short stories is 'The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson. Now this is a very different type of moral. At first the story seems to be this really fun little tradition that a small town celebrates every year but in reality it is a horrid look into the dangers of blind conformity and the dangers of traditions that are continue simply because they have always been done. It is a very shocking story and there is a very horrid twist at the end that really shocks you into realising just how blindly people follow along with things that are wrong and even be cruel. We read this in book club and it really brought out a lot of discussion. Some people found it to be very horrible while others saw it as okay. Again this is not a 'feel good' moral but it is a very powerful message that really makes you think. Another piece that I find uplifting is “The Last Leaf” by O. Henry. An artist struggles to make ends meet with his girlfriend sick in an apartment right below them. He paints a single leaf on a close-by tree in order for her to know that they still have hope. The story is so beautiful in its quiet portrayal of friendship and the power of art to sustain life. I love this short story because there is no moral at the end of it. The moral is embedded throughout the whole story in the way that the characters treat one another with kindness and beauty. Every time I read it, I find something new about the characters and their relationships. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye in the happiest of ways.

I think one of the major themes that support the plot in Peter Rabbit is the theme of routine. The story begins with very specific routine of Mrs. Rabbit going out, telling the children what to do and then them doing their respective tasks. Peter’s choice tears up all of that and causes chaos and danger. The entire middle of the book is this very exciting but also very scary story of Peter’s actions causing so much trouble. In the end Peter is back in bed, the sisters are having supper and life has returned to some sort of order. The children are a little different because Peter lost his clothes and he is ill. I think this theme highlights the importance of having routine in our lives. It shows that routines, such as a mother’s, exist in order to keep us safe and to make life more peaceful. When one person tears up their routine it not only affects them but can cause worry, danger and added work for everyone else. This is how the first and last parts of the book support the exciting but also scary middle.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod is a warm, cozy, little poem that celebrates childhood and the imagination of kids in order to describe sleep. The three fishermen are proxies for children everywhere, and their boat, a wooden shoe, is probably just a crib or bed that the child has magnified in their imagination. The ‘nets of silver and gold’ are probably just a series of thoughts that cross the sleeping child’s mind just before he falls asleep and they disappear into nothingness, glittering for just a moment. In my readings of various interpretations of the poem including links to Dutch folklore and even the Milky Way as a great river in the sky, I believe what makes this poem so powerful is that it is universal. Every culture has lullabies and children’s songs. This one turns ordinary bedtime into an adventure that is shared by all. The rhythm of the poem is soothing and at the same time the imagery stirs the imagination. Children can relish in the poetry while fighting to stay awake, while adults can be transported back to a simpler time and reminded that even in the quietest of moments we can experience the epic.

I attempted to read the book to my 3rd grade class and it was somewhat unsuccessful. The early chapters in which Billy tries to save money were too slow for my students. They got slightly more into the story when he went hunting, but were left puzzled by the end. However, when I read it to my 6th grade class, they completely fell for it. We had long discussions about various aspects of the story. So, this book is best suited for students in grades 5 and up.