Bread and jam for Frances
"Jam on toast," sings Frances about the food she likes most--until she has it for the sixth meal in two days
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
4people
2013–2022years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Could you be thinking of Bread and Jam for Frances? I had completely forgotten about this book until I read your comment and it popped back into my head. Frances jumping rope and eating toast and jam. It’s weird the way our brains can remember random things from decades ago.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/911579.Bread_and_Jam_for...
- This is my favorite book of all time, introduced to me by a high school English teacher.
Russel Hoban is more famous for his children's books such as Bread & Jam for Frances, which my Mom got me as a kid.
- Did you talk to her about why she shouldn't throw it out? All my kids were different, and I found that rules by fiat never worked for me, but discussions about what we were trying to achieve where more successful. When they were very young, we didn't talk about things so much as we read books with stories and we talked about the stories. Things like Bread and Jam for Frances or Pancakes for Breakfast. I found toddlers to be great observers, and not so great at reasoning :-).
- That's an amazing opening. I'd like to read that now. (I have heard of this book before, but only in outline.)
Edit: Oh my word! He wrote the text of the children's book "Bread and Jam for Frances" (and, I now learn, a whole series of others with the same character). That's a lovely bit of writing. I had no idea.
- Welcome to being a parent. Throughout their lives they will find things that they desire above all else. Your goal should be to figure out how to use that to teach them moderation, and 3 is about the right place to start in my experience.
The primary goal for me at that stage was to help them understand delayed gratification, or specifically that working on something not as fun can lead to something fun. The secondary goal turned out to be to find other things that are just as fun. This latter goal was abetted by reading stories like "Bread and Jam for Frances" in which our heroine learns that while Bread and Jam is tasty, it isn't all there is in the world.
I did not realize it at the time but the secondary goal of finding things equally fun becomes really useful as they get older. To know from experience that no matter how fun this thing you are doing is, there are other things that are fun out there waiting to be discovered, helped mitigate some obsessing on the one fun thing. Reading/books are great for that since they come in many shapes and topics and you can learn a ton from them.
