Don’t You Know Who I Am?
When I saw the results of a recent study that showed percentages of kids who, in a recent survey, could not identify the vital work of historical figures such as Frida Kahlo, John Lennon and Marie Curie, I was excited to share my own true life story that supports this conclusion:
Last year, whilst spectating an American sport – firstly, gosh – remember when, and secondly, I think it was baseball, I was scrolling through my phone and found a hilarious meme type joke. (The irony of reporting kid’s ignorance in light of my behaviour in the previous sentence is not lost on me).
Anyway, the joke was that someone “from the internet” had ordered a birthday cake, photo-iced with their idol’s face, that being Mariah Carey. It had allegedly been misheard and the cake was returned proudly with the face of Marie Curie. Oh, I did laugh. My daughter, then eight, asked to see what I was laughing at and also laughed, but added pointedly, “Mummy, I am only laughing because you are.”
Holly clearly did not know who either was, but we passed some time discussing it, whilst (coughs) watching baseball – I think.
The study, commissioned by best-selling children’s illustrated book series Little People, BIG DREAMS, revealed that 73% of kids asked couldn’t identify Frida Kahlo as an artist, almost half (43%) hadn’t heard of Aretha Franklin and 33% could not identify Marie Curie.
I tested this on my own offspring. Ben (7) had no clue on any, but even though I had higher hopes for Holly (10), the only hit was Martin Luther King and her reference point was the “I have a dream” speech. Video content from the study also included kid comment gold, whereby one child thought John Lennon “discovered glasses” and another thought Ru Paul was in charge of “a race where people drag things”. You can see what they did there though, right?
In all fairness, I suspect it works both ways and we are approaching that stage in the parent/child continuum where names could be dropped by either of them that I won’t know. I confess I still have a mental “to do” to find out who Drake is and to grow to love whatever is the output. *I suspect Drake is not targeting 49 year old mothers and would be fully accepting of this ignorance.
All this aside though, I have to say, I completely adore this concept, Little People, BIG DREAMS, founded and authored by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara – a series of books presenting the lives of pioneering figures for young readers. Vegara says, “To me, the success of this series relies on the fact that children love to read real stories about other children achieving great things. It gives them the strength and the courage to believe in themselves and dream BIG. Just like Elton John, Aretha Franklin or John Lennon did.” Amen to that!
The series now has 50 titles. I was keen to see who had been covered and to pick the ones I’d most like my two to read. Here is my BIG DREAMS wish list for my little people:
Mummy’s list for Holly (10)
- Emiline Pankhurst
- Coco Chanel
- Audrey Hepburn
- Dolly Parton
- Jane Austen
And 5 more not in the range but in my own dreams for my girl: Paula Radcliffe, Jo Cox, Caitlin Moran, Debbie Harry and Margaret Atwood
Mummy’s list for Ben (7)
- Muhammad Ali
- Alan Turing
- Stephen Hawking
- Charles Darwin
- David Bowie
And my requests for the range for Ben: Ricky Gervais, Bobby Charlton, Elvis Presley, Barack Obama and Thomas Edison (gotta love a failed light bulb success story).
Whoever we choose to look up to, letting kids decide by teaching them great life stories like this, sounds like a great idea to me. Little People, BIG DREAMS celebrated the 50th title in their series on 13th October 2020 with the release of a special gold foil edition of Elton John. All titles are available to buy at www.littlepeoplebigdreams.com
