The Boy Who Hated Valentine's Day Will Change His Mind

While I enjoy Valentine’s Day every year, it was always most fun for me when I was in elementary school.  Those were the days of decorating cardboard mailboxes, sitting down and carefully choosing – or, if you were really artistic, making – Valentines for each classmate and coming home the next day with a full box of your own.  I still have dozens of old-school Valentines sitting in a plastic tub with all the other cards I’ve received over the years.  The signatures of my long-ago classmates and the heavy dose of 80s pop culture in the small perforated cards that most kids preferred make me smile when nostalgia compels me to peruse them.

Reading The Boy Who Hated Valentine’s Day took me back to those days.  In this picture book written by Sally Wittman and illustrated by Chaya Burstein, Ben is the titular character.  The reason he hates the holiday is twofold.  First, he hates it because a bullying classmate convinces him that it’s for sissies, and he feels embarrassed about loving it.  Second, he hates it because he spends so much time berating Valentine’s Day that none of his classmates give him cards.  Thus, he begins to develop a different kind of dislike for the day.

The following year, Ben recalls his disappointment at the lack of cards around the same time he discovers his burgeoning artistic talent.  When his dad jokingly suggests he take up a career in counterfeiting, Ben comes up with a complex plan to avoid the humiliation of last year.  While it is clever in its way, wouldn’t it make more sense to simply renounce his renouncing of Valentine’s Day?  Surely he realizes that the only reason he didn’t get any cards last year is that everyone thought he didn’t want them.

Then again, when people are dealing with hurt feelings, they don’t always behave in the most logical fashion.  What matters is that Ben approaches his next Valentine’s Day with a spirit of resentfulness, but he channels that bitterness into creativity and then is compelled into a compassionate act that brings him a much happier holiday than he anticipated.  The story becomes a doorway to a wonderful approach to the world: if you feel have been slighted, instead of stewing in your own juices, try to reach out to someone else in a similar position.  Chances are that you will both be happier as a result.

This is a cute story with a good message and three well-defined characters.  The familiar situation of an elementary school card exchange makes it relatable for many kids, while Burstein’s illustrations have an appealingly old-fashioned look to them.  As people get older, many become disenfranchised with Valentine’s Day for a variety of reasons, but for an eight-year-old, the holiday ought to be innocent fun.  Perhaps, as Wittman proposes, it might even be the catalyst for a new friendship, and that truly is something to celebrate.