It’s a fun Xmas story and serves as a better-than-expected shield when fending off blows from siblings.
Kids do the damnedest things.
Particularly to books.
Especially when they can’t read.
Let’s face it, if you hand a book to a young enough kid, he or she will try to eat it (and sometimes succeed). Even if they aren’t hungry.
Which makes me wonder, if you can buy edible underwear, why has no one come out with an edible book?
This lack of fresh and healthy edible books is why I only buy my toddlers hardback books. They can try, but they aren’t getting those down. At least, not easy.
Sadly, that all changes once they discover the knife drawer. Damn you, Williams-Sonoma!
But the resilience of the format is what really makes me wish CreateSpace offered a hardback option.
The paperback proof of my latest offering, the Marlowe and the Spacewoman short story The Santa Claus Gang, arrived in the mail yesterday.
I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out (and have subsequently released the book for publication).
My kids seemed pretty excited too, until they discovered there were no pictures inside.
Then it was just another weird, seemingly pointless toy kept in the special shelf next to similar weird, seemingly pointless toys that you go to when you want to tear yourself a sheet of paper.
Philistines.
But if nothing else, they deemed the cover a huge success, which is more than can be said about their views of my previous book, Marlowe and the Spacewoman. They were very unimpressed with that cover. Perhaps because of the bar of soap that features so prominently on it.
There, that takes care of the shameless plug for my new book. Back to the topic at hand: kids and books.
The other night my kids barricaded themselves in their bedroom, pushed the toy box over to the door, and started removing books from the hanging shelves on said door.
Not every book, mind you. One kiddo would pull a book out and show it to the other kiddo, who would judge it either ‘scary’ or ‘not scary’.
The scary books were handed down and dumped into a basket in the corner of the room furthest from the beds, behind a dresser.
“Why are you putting the books there?” I asked.
“They’re scary books,” Kiddo #2 answered solemnly. “We don’t want them to get us.”
I’m not sure exactly what the perceived threat was from these books, but they were definitely taking it seriously.
Now I can understand my deranged foray into children’s books, Kleencut, ending up exiled to the ‘Danger Zone’ – after all, it’s a terrible, 1-star review freebie on Amazon that really shouldn’t be read to children no matter how much they clamor for it.
But the Berenstain Bears?
Apparently, the Berenstain Bears book Safe and Sound! is particularly scary, because it was at the bottom of the pile.
I would have given them ‘boring’, because man it does drag, but scary?
I guess my kids feel safer knowing I am more likely to be injured as I contort myself in an attempt to get at that book so I can read it to them.
And that, in itself, is pretty damn scary.
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And now, a word from our sponsor: me! My books are available!The Santa Claus Gang:
Marlowe and the Spacewoman:
Kleencut (FREE!):
ian m dudley 