“You know what always bothers me about books, movies, and so on?
How come almost all of our entertainment is based around characters that are either A1 great people or at the very least have very strong redemptive qualities?
This is a little heady for a review of a picture book.
Here’s the thing: Kid doesn’t want to read a book. We go through a whole slew of ways the kid could be tortured that still would not convince him. Hanging upside-down, having a pool of sharks below him, being waterboarded, receiving a FedEx box containing his wife’s decapitated head (note: my memory is a little fuzzy here, but you get the drift).
And, of course, by the end he relents and allows someone to read him the book. And we live happily ever after.
Okay, can we get one goddamn book where the kid acts like an asshole and remains an asshole? Because most of the kids I’ve met have moments of greatness, moments of rock bottom assholery, and then a lot of in-between times. So maybe it would be reasonable to say that the kid remains an asshole for the entirety of the book? And then the parents reading this aloud can say, “Man, what an asshole. I’m glad you’re not like that, son.”
Does everyone have to provide a good example? We had Goofus and Gallant. Goofus was the bad guy. The dum-dum. The one who could do no right. And who was more fun to read about? Goofus, goddamn it! Gallant was boring.
The other thing I’ve never really seen a kid do is express their disdain for forced activities in cool creative ways. Hell, if the kid can string together an ever-building list of mortal threats, remembering each one in order and constantly adding more, I would say that he probably doesn’t need to read the damn book, or any books for that matter, until at least junior high. He seems to have a pretty developed sense of narrative already.
I just hate that. I hate when things get cute at the end. Everything has to end cute. There’s not one picture book out there where the dude says, “You know what? Being a porcupine blows, and although people want me around when an evil fox shows up, I’m still pretty pissed about the litany of other issues here. It doesn’t really make for a good cost/benefit ratio here.”
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