The wonderful blog , Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, had a recent post with excerpts from the book Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children’s Book. Children’s books are like that, aren’t they – kind teachers with colorful pictures. At the end of the post the blog author, jules, asks, “What children’s book changed the way you saw the world?” Now that’s a fun thought.

The one  book I remember reading many times was The Story About Ping. I loved this book. My sister retains the prized original copy of it, complete with a coffee ring from my mom using it as a coaster one time.

What fascinated me about this tale was its setting – China. And on the Yangtze river. So many miles away in a totally different world. At the time, I knew zero Asian kids. None. How that is, I don’t know. You’d think I would have known at least one. But nope. Anything Asian was very exotic. I wanted to go to China. I wanted a duck named Ping.

The story itself is basically about the travails of trying to escape punishment. It’s a bit about the tangled webs we weave when we try to avoid the harsh truth of reality. As a result, Ping leaves the boat and his mom, has a bit of adventure, gets captured and, with the help of the boy who found him, escapes. As a kid, I thought Ping must have been happy to finally get whacked on the butt because it meant being back with his mom and family. And oh what a story he had to tell.