You may have gathered I work in a library. My specific job is working with children, youth and their parents.

Four times a year, the sixth grade teachers of Family and Consumer Science (formerly "Home Economics"), a class every sixth grader must take, invite me in for two days to take entire class double periods to demonstrate storytelling techniques and discuss the uses of picture books in the development of language, literacy, and emotional maturity among the very young. One of the books I use is Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Thacher Hurd.

In the runup to my reading of the book, the kids and I talk about the phenomenon of "second wind". I explain the biology of it a little, and the need for it in more primative societies ("a boost of energy to keep us alert so the leopards don't eat us") as well as the uses for it in our own society. We talk about the effects of an adrenline push in little kids, and how it differs from the phenomenon kids their age experience.

We go over the book's very carefully constructed mechanisms -- the rhyme, the static setting, the many small objects to locate -- which encourage an overexcited or overtired child to sit, allowing his body to relax while the book preoccupies the mind. Then I tell them that there are some peculiarities about the illustrations, and they are to watch carefully as I read, because I'll be asking them if they can guess what those things are.

Sure enough, as I read the book, in the middle of the morning, we have yawning, stretching, slow blinks, slumping in chairs... And then I tell them what I noticed about them before I ask them to tell me what they noticed about the illustrations. "You're all, what, about 12 years old? So you've been around the block a few times. You've been sold to by the American advertising industry, one of the most powerful persuasive groups that ever was, so you already know when you're being sold to, and you have terrific sales resistance when you want to. And more to the point, I told you what effect this book has, and why. And yet I see all the sleepy stuff. Now, if a sophisticated, informed audience such as yourselves can succumb to a reading of this book in the middle of the day, can you imagine the effect on a defenseless three-year-old in the hands of a skilled reader? Bam! Out like a light! This book is a sleeping pill inside of two book covers. Handle with care!" I always get a laugh, and the kids are even more eager to take the book apart and see what makes it work. It's a skill I dearly hope they apply to other things they encounter in their lives.

Propaganda tools and psychological manipulatives are everywhere, and have been for a long time. It doesn't bother me that they're there. What bothers me is us. The tools aren't evil, or thoughtless, or selfish. But we can be. The trouble comes with lack of self-awareness, and lack of reflection on our motives and objectives. Those are hard things to do. They need to be practiced, and we don't teach them.