A few years ago I was in Majuli, a river island in the Brahmaputra, Assam. I had travelled their with a small film crew to capture how a set of STEM books published by Pratham Books, a non-profit, multilingual children's books publishing house were being used by teachers in two schools to help students learn STEM concepts and foster a sense of curiosity in their minds.

I asked as many children as I could: 'Which book do you like?' and they would name a book.

I would ask them 'Why do you like this book?'

The would immediately respond 'Because it has a good moral.'

Now, these were STEM picture books: biographies of famous scientists, picture books on hyper loops and the evolution of telephone technology, the science behind the baking of cakes. There were no morals being imparted whatsoever. But because of the deeply ingrained belief that books exist to teach us things: morals, good habits, etc, the students automatically said that they liked a particular book because it taught them morals.

The NY Times journalist and podcast host Ezra Klein recently tweeted about two of my favourite picture books Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back and This is Not My Hat.

Klein said he 'had some questions about what lessons the books were teaching'.

One of my favourite picture book creators (and all-round awesome person) Vinayak Varma expressed how I felt about this perfectly.

It's not something just on Twitter. I see parents looking for books that will teach their children all kinds of things: yoga, manners, sharing, eating vegetables, how to deal with bullies, how not to bite other people, and recently and more strangely, how to help their three year old understand that even 'mamma' could teach them and not just miss. Because apparently said 3 year old didn't want to be instructed on how to hold a crayon. It is no longer enough for books to bring young readers pleasure, fun, joy and happiness. Books must teach, morally instruct, improve vocabulary, help attain academic success and in addition act as conduits for parents to have conversations with their children on all manner of things.

The best books do teach us things - about ourselves and other people and places, but never in an obvious A for Apple way. They don't hit you over the head with morals and good behaviour.

Some time back I was chatting about a book with one of my favourite editors Bijal Vachharajani. We had slightly differing view points on the book and my last ditch attempt at standing by my pov was 'But it can be such a good way to have a conversation with children about this topic?' to which she said 'Are books the only way to talk to children?'

Which shut me up. They aren't. We can sometimes just talk to our kids. We can show how we wish for them to behave by modelling that behaviour. If we don't want them to be bullies, we should stop bullying them about how to hold their crayons.

And we can leave books to be a source of joy, pleasure and fun!