I'm sure every parent has to deal with the fact that their kid is going to like books that they don't like. Romy has recently become very opinionated about which books she wants to hear. We have her standards: King Bidgood's in the Bathtub,
Little Beauty,
and, of course (and thankfully), Madeline.
We go to the library once a week, and I pick books and she picks books that she hopefully will like. This week, one of us, in some crazy, jacked-up bad decision making moment picked this:
There is nothing really wrong with this book. It's an author-devised elongation (that sounded fancy. Or pretentious. Or grammatically incorrect.) of the song "Rock-a-bye Baby," which is messed up in itself. And while the rhymes in this book are a bit clunky to sing, they're not horrible. But the pictures...
...are
terrifying. Click on
this link to visit the author and illustrator's page (they are a husband and wife team). There, you will find such pictures as this:
and this:
Scary, right? I'm not knocking this book. Romy really likes it. Over and over again. But there is something about the pictures that really scares me. The realism, mixed with the way they sort of jump off the page. Romy woke up this morning at 5:30 with a nightmare. I'm not saying it's this book's fault. But maybe that's why
I didn't sleep very well last night.
[Funny aside: Romy did definitely have a nightmare over this book,
{look inside on Amazon
here}
which I know because she was pointing at it in horror on her bedroom floor when I went in to see what was wrong. I don't blame her at all.]
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4 comments:
Oh yeah, disturbing children's picture books.
When I worked in the Scholastic Book Clubs and EVERY publisher presented their books to us, me and some unnamed co-workers kept a running shelf of the most disturbing books.
One that seems to creep others out but that I'm fond of are The Lonely Doll books.
And yeah, Piggies is kind of creepy. Don Wood's art in general is kind of creepy. It's like that animated horror movie style.
Holy crap, those Lonely Doll books are scary.
The scary thing about piggies is that there are piggies dancing on your fingers. Tiny piggies. What a concept.
I have the Piggies fingerpuppets! Harcourt made them/licensed them when I worked there.
They are super cute. But the book is scary. :)
Nina, do you torture children with those piggies in your spare time?
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