How GOD Gives Us PEANUT BUTTER by Mary LeBar, Illustrated by Vera Gohman. Paperback booklet published 1964.
This is something I’ve been wanting to know about for a long time, particularly if the explanation can be accompanied by actions… as this book is. The thing is, I’ve read the book and I’ve done the actions (see scans below) and i still don’t understand how god gives us peanut butter. Maybe the children (I assume the book is for children) of 1964 had a different understanding of this sort of thing than I do as a grown man in 2011.
Strangely though, for a book which appears at first glance to be vintage religious propaganda, there’s does seem to be a lack of God throughout the book. OK, he’s there at the beginning and at the end (re “he”: God would most definitely have been a man in this peanut butter world of 1964) but in the main part of the text I can’t find any god references… although maybe there’s a complicated subtext here that I’m not seeing.
The author and illustrator also worked on that other best seller in the How GOD Gives Us series entitled How GOD Gives Us Ice Cream. A quick www search and apparently they also wrote other fine titles including How GOD Gives Us Warm Coats, Apples, Bread and Happy Homes (that’s 4 different titles… these subjects are bigger than 1 book can realistically cope with) … collect the set.
This is an epic book. I purchased it some time ago to show my children and noted to them how it ignored the masses of toiling workers necessary to get peanut butter from a seed to the store.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it is epic and to my way of thinking, more than a little strange. I ended up selling this book at a book fair to a young mother pregnant with a second child. I nearly warned her and then figured i needed the $5. I still haven't found any of the other titles in the series... but i am looking.
ReplyDeleteRobin