2 posts tagged “bedtime books”
Tonight Eric went to celebrate his friend's birthday in Pleasanton, so Ainsley and I had a silly evening together -- we had breakfast for dinner, we went to the library REALLY REALLY late, we skipped bath and mixed up our usual nighttime routine. When it came time for stories, I let her pick out of the new batch of library books we had just brought home, which included these little gems:
And really, they are all lovely books. Unfortunately, they share a common theme: DUCK ABANDONMENT AND DUCK FEAR.
We started off with Ping, which actually came with a CD, so I just sat back and turned pages. All I remembered about it was liking it as a kid when all the ducks walked in a line. People! These ducks are beaten with a stick! Ping is separated from his family and captured to become DUCK DINNER! And, being a CD, I couldn't fake the words -- the brutal tale just unravelled before Ainsley's enormous eyes.
"Ping got lost," she whispered after it's all over.
"Yes, but he found his family and the wise-eyed boat [WTF?] and it all turned out so wonderfully for Ping. Aren't we HAPPY??"
Next up is Little Quack. Mama stays for all of this one, but each little duck needs to point out something terrifying about the night, which is preventing their sleep. This provided inspiration for my daughter, who is rehearsing for the touring production of Mommy, Just One More Song -- And Some Ice Water, Please: A Only-Child Revue of Bedtime Delays From Seven to Midnight. "Mommy, why is the night oh so dark?" Thanks, Little Quack, you damn duck.
Ah, but then: Come Along, Daisy. This book we know! This book we OWN. This book we have read a million times -- but not since the Imagination came. To summarize: Daisy wanders off and plays with a frog, and is All Alone. A big fish ripples the water, and she hears rustling in the reeds, which turns out to be -- her mama! Not scary, if you get to the end when Mama comes back -- and if you don't have a show-offy librarian mom that is just Such a Good Storyteller that she can't shut it off.
Now read this to yourself in a dark room in the scariest possible manner: "Something big stirred beneath her. Daisy shivered. She scrambled up onto the riverbank. Then something screeched in the sky above! Daisy hid in the reeds. If only Mama Duck were here! Something was rustling along the riverbank. Daisy could hear it getting closer... and closer, and closer, and CLOSER ..."
At this point Ainsley starts whimpering, "I don't like this, I don't like this!" Then my auto-pilot turns off and I realize how scary I just made this stupid bedtime book. What the hell is wrong with me?
"No, no, it's Mama Duck, look! They're together now!" But Ainsley is done. She marches out of bed and collects the three books and tells me, "You need to take these back to the libraray. They are Too Scary."
We stuck Owl Babies on the return pile, too, since the whole plot is three scared owls waiting for their mom, repeating "I want my mommy" over and over again.
Nice work, library mom.
I have a real problem with one of Ainsley's favorite books. It is Zoo's Who, apparently by the literary equivalent of Alan Smithee, and it is simply riddled with what I consider irredeemable grammatical errors. I don't want to go all Eats, Shoots and Leaves on baby board books, but come on!
For instance, I give you the following (line breaks belong to Zoo's Who):
The toucan hops, it
rarely flies, it's hard you
see, with a beak this size!
Moving around between the
trees, picking fruits and
nuts with ease.
Or how about:
The elephant's trunk is her
nose, it stretches right
down to her toes.
Or even:
Zebra's stripes are black and
white, when he sees a lion he
gets a fright.
This book has 14 pages total. Do they not believe in semicolons over there at Priddy Books? In fairness, I suppose, even if a copy editor did manage to glance through this (while stroking the fuzzy panda and the scaly iguana), ee
wouldn't know where to begin. Maybe:
The toucan hops, it The toucan hops; it
rarely flies, it's hard you
see, with a beak this size!
Moving around between the
trees, picking fruits and
nuts with ease.
I know the point of this book is to have fuzzy tactile experiences and not to be a punctuation primer, but OH MY SWEET JESUS it's like nails on a chalkboard every night when I read this. I can't even get verbal punctuation up in that bitch.
That's my rant, and I don't even really feel better now. It's still out there. Worse, it's still in here. Also, that tactile toucan? FURRY. NOT EVEN FEATHERY. There is no experience this book offers that is not warped and wrong.
I just finished The Yiddish Policeman's Union, which was AWESOME. I bow before Michael Chabon. But more on that later.
