Books, for Good Or Bad

The family and I attended a mass book sale this weekend, and ended up walking away with a shopping bag full of kids books for basically the price of hauling them away. It's splendid, to have the freedom to buy books you otherwise wouldn't give a second glance to, but it's a pleasure that's not without its risks.

Going through the stack this evening, the oldest kid hands me a book. Being four and unable to read (though she's darn close. We can't spell things around her anymore without her getting wise), she plops in my lap and hands me a book. It's called "My World Turned Upside Down" and had a kid hanging from a jungle gym on the cover. OK. I open the page and read "After my father died, I felt like my world had been turned upside down."

Next.

Luckily, she wasn't too hot on the idea, so we went with a book called "Christmas in July." Pretty safe, right? I thought so too until page 5, where Santa lost his pants and ended up a beggar on the street, begging for pants. Santa versus homelessness, vagrancy and public indecency!

Next.

Then we went to a book called "Herman the Worm" based on the popular camp song. As many of you will recall, when Herman gets bigger you ask, in a loud voice (this is key), "Herman, Baby, what happened?" But you really yell it. She caught onto that pretty fast. Then he burps and gets smaller. The kid asked me if that meant he threw up, then proceeded to make gagging noises up until dinner time.

Next.

Finally we landed on The Emperor's New Clothes. Yes, public nudity was involved but I figured it was a pretty good story. I like the lesson. She wasn't' interested.

Next time I'm reading the books before throwing them in a bag.