I Hate Everyone
illustrated by Cinta Arribas
(Pow! Kids Books, 2018)
"The book reads like a version of Whitman's barbaric yawp. It's wildly alive with the girl's unchecked bursts of word and emotion. The way she grasps at and simultaneously rejects love, wanting to be both acknowledged and left alone, is universal and timeless. The book exposes the slipperiness of what we so much believe to be true coupled with the shortcomings of the English language — German comes off better with words like fernweh (wanting to be anywhere but where you are) and fuchsteufelswild (gutting rage). It ends with the exhausted admission, "Somehow even while I am busy hating you … I love you." Tolstoy was after this realization, too, and it took him 1,000 pages."
"... any parent curious to see how an author and illustrator can verbalize what, in many children, can only be expressed through frustrated fire and fury, will find in "I Hate Everyone" a balm and a friend they never knew they could have. Funny, quirky, brave, and strange, this little book takes its two tiny hands and furiously beats out a space for itself on your children's bookshelves."
Repost about I HATE EVERYONE from @picturebookstogrow (Shoshana Magnet)
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I love this book. I love it so much! Lots of parents and educators do not like it and will not use it. Hate is a powerful word, and it's a challenging time to think about hate when white supremacist/misogynist hatred is on the rise. Many of us wish our children wouldn't use the word hate and we try to get them to use more descriptive words to articulate their feelings. And yet, our children do use it, and we need to find ways of speaking with them about hate.
This book follows a little girl who is having a meltdown at her birthday party. She models so well the experience of when our emotions overwhelm us and nothing feels right. Also, a book that features a little girl who feels profound rage and is not shamed or talked out of her feeling is profoundly feminist (with thanks to my therapist for this point).
It makes me laugh when the little girl says: "I hate when the balloons pop! And I hate when you say stop popping the balloons!" Revealing how difficult it is to be a child where you are bossed around continuously. The little girl needs to push her parents away so that they can show they love her by staying close.
My eyes always well up at the end of the book when she says "I hate you but I want you to love me." Isn't this profound human desire to push people away just when we need them most something that persists into adulthood? How many times have we all told the people we love most: "I told you to leave! … Where are you going?"
To me, this book does the profound human work of unpacking what lies beneath the words "I hate you" and the yearning for connection they often reveal, as well as opening up the possibilities for talking to our children about the complexities of hate. Simply telling children "you can't say I hate you" (which I still do all the time) to me isn't as helpful as the nuanced conversations that are made possible using this book.
SO many women suppress so much of their anger under patriarchy that we don't even know when we are angry anymore. I Hate Everyone helps to remedy this failing while also suggesting that desire for connection is an intimate part of rage.
"You Don't Love Me!" is the theme of Ilana Kurshan's Biblical commentary, Torah Sparks, for the weekly portion Haazinu, September 18, 2021, in which she mentions my picture book, I HATE EVERYONE.
<And then one day, in the midst of a tantrum, I sat down quietly beside her and began reading her a picture book called I Hate Everyone by Naomi Danis. The book is about a girl who throws a tantrum at her own birthday party, insisting that she hates everyone around her and doesn't want them to look at her. But she doesn't want them to look away, either, and finally she realizes that even though she keeps telling everyone that she hates them, she loves them all the while, deep down inside. My daughter was captivated by the scowling girl on the cover with her arms crossed in fury – the same girl who manages, by the end of the book, to turn her lips up in a smile. Just after we turned that last page, my daughter looked into my eyes and told me that deep down she knows I love her, and she loves me. Since then we have read this book countless times. I learned to reach for it every time she fell apart, and soon I didn't have to read it anymore – the mere sight of the book would calm her down, and she'd pull herself up into a sitting position and begin "reading" it to herself, turning the pages intently until she reached the last page and her scowl, too, had turned into a smile. I realized the book was more than just a story; it bore witness to my love for her, and to our special connection. It was, in this sense, her Shirat Haazinu.>
Best of the Year Lists
I HATE EVERYONE made it into THREE of School Librarian Journal blogger and librarian Elizabeth Bird's 31 lists of chidlren's books for December 2018.
<<Come here you sweet little weirdo book! You unapologetic charmer. Yeah, it's not going to go down well with parents that have a strict policy on the "h-word", that's true. But Danis is funny and the book shows that. Kids love it because of the contradictions. You can't top a kid who says not to look at her and then dumps a full bowl of Cheetos on her head in an effort to get attention. A hoot.>>
<<Already made a nice appearance on the funny picture books list, but please make no mistake when I tell you that it's a strange little buggy. First off, using the word "Hate" not just in the title but repeatedly in the text is normally considered a real no-no by publishers. Some parents, after all, avoid the word like the plague. Its got guts, this book. To those nervous parents, I should report that I've read this to my own kids multiple times and neither the seven nor the four-year-old have ever used the word once. So it doesn't have some magical properties that will turn your children rude. Phew!>>
And finally BEST BELOVED PICTURE BOOKS. <<The titles closest to the heart of the children's book community.>>
Click on the links to see the most amazing collection of beautiful books for kids.
Jemima Shafei-Ongu Writer (Australia) on Facebook
<<Once in a while, a wonderfully written book comes along that makes you laugh and relate and learn and love all at the same time. Naomi Danis's I Hate Everyone (illustrated marvellously by Cinta Arribas) captures the roller coaster of emotions that is so often experienced by young children (and all of us, really). Yet, with therapeutic skill and understanding, along with creative talent, Danis so respectfully demonstrates the power of relational attachment that parents can bring to a young person's emotionally difficult experiences, to support growth and learning. This is SO one of my favourite books.>>
"My little guy goes through moments when he's so mad that he hates everyone and everything. That's why I really liked this book, it reminded me tons of him. This is a very cute book about a little girl that when she's mad gets so upset that she hates everything. My boys and I really liked this book because even while she is saying how much she hates things, she is also showing how much she needs love and care."
No, I don't hate everyone. But who hasn't thought and/or uttered that statement at least once? I know I have, which is why I was delighted when author, Naomi Danis, asked if she could send me her new picture book, I Hate Everyone, illustrated by Cinta Arribas.
Since I Hate Everyone is a kids' book, I let my six-year-old son, Nathan (my youngest), take over the blog. But I will interject for a moment to say we had a lot of fun together with this book, which starts at a birthday party in which the guest of honor is simply not in the mood. (In other words, every birthday I ever threw for any of my four children when they were little.)