Children's books
OK, I just finished reading to Simon the Disney version of Peter Pan. Some well-meaning soul gave us an anthology of Disneyfied stories, and smart as Si is, he's just not that discriminating of a reader yet. BUT he is enamored of Peter Pan.
How does one manage to suck every last bit of soul and charm out of the story of Peter Pan? How do you make someone despise Wendy for being such a creampuff, and Peter for being spoiled, instead of seeing them for the lovely fable that they are? Captain Hook isn't even bad in this version, he's merely annoying, somewhat like a gnat or something else equally insignificant. The whole thing is incredibly poorly written -- like Reader's Digest Condensed Books, or worse -- it reminds me of one of those horrible book that other well-meaning people buy little children where the "authors" plug the kid's name into the appropriate slots throughout the story thereby creating a "personalized" book.
You can just hear it can't you?
"It was a beautiful day in [Highland Park, Liverpool, Baghdad] when [Simon, Florence, Ahmed] woke up. S/he knew it was a school day so s/he walked off to school. There the teacher said, "We are going to draw pictures of what we'd like to be when we grow up." So [Simon, Florence, Ahmed] got out their prettiest crayons and drew pictures of [a chef, a prostitute, a terrorist] [pls forgive my stereotyping in the interest of making my narrative flow - BB]..."
I know there are those who will think I am making this up, but I am not. Simon has one of these insipid books and his father and I take turns trying to hide it from him. Worse yet, all the illustrations are horriblly-drawn pictures of animals dressed as people, so we have elephants being ballet dancers, racoons being cooks, and pussy cats as nurses. Very disturbing.
When oh when will Simon be old enough to appreciate - ok, Nabokov might be a stretch - I'd settle for the Hardy Boys. I think.
posted by BabelBabe @ 8:30 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
No, I think I'd like to hear your views on the porn industry. Go for it.
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