Giveaway Contest: We’ve partnered with Flatiron Books to give away THREE copies of M. L. Rio’s recently released (and critically praised) trade paperback version of If We Were Villains!
To enter, you must: 1) reblog this post, and 2) be following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check ;P). Easy, right? We’ll randomly choose one winner on each of the following dates: 19 May, 2 June, and 16 June. And yes, this is an international giveaway. Good luck! 🙂
Ok I saw a rb of this with some context and I only remember like half of it so I’m also using Google I may get some of this wrong
But apparently the “first errand” thing isn’t just a cute little fact about the little kid, it’s a totally real thing done in Japan to teach kids that they can like rely on the community to offer assistance if they need it. They send their kids (like 2-3 years old) out alone to perform a relatively simple errand like going to a convenience store and buying a carton of milk. (There’s even a tv show where a camera crew follows children as they accomplish this first errand.) It’s not uncommon to see kids as young as 6-7 riding the subway alone because they’ve gained this sense of independence that comes from knowing that there will be people to help out if they need it.