A family ritual of ours is a weekly (at least) visit to the library where we let the girls pull anything and everything off the shelf they'd like to read, watch, or listen to. Our only limitation is the sheer amount of stuff that we can carry to the van in one trip.
As the four-year-old plucks things from the shelves, we do a quick preview because a huge portion of children's books are just weird. For instance, there's a huge genre I'd label "victimhood" which contains books about being a particular race, or religion, or having a handicap or something. We eschew all these books with an agenda other than telling a good story.
Well, even with our filtering, sometimes we miss a stinker.
What slipped through security this week was Mommy Laid an Egg: Or, Where Do Babies Come from?
From the cover, it looks like it will be whimsical.
But, after a page where it's explained that the cartoon penis fits into the cartoon vagina - an arrow even helps us make the connection (and it's cartoonish enough that it's almost innocuous) - we suddenly hap upon two pages that show many positions in which mom and dad can do it in.
Check it out for yourself, and believe it or not, this is NSFW!!! And it's a freakin' kids book!
Did they really need the Kama Sutra angle? Oh, and I especially love the pair who's role-playing with the clown noses and stuff. As if clowns weren't scary enough to kids.
What in the hell were these people thinking?
I half expected to find John and Yoko's conception video as a bonus DVD in the back.
(In case you've never heard this one, they filmed themselves screwing when they were trying for Sean, so they could give him the videos - along with his birthing vids - when he was old enough. How scarred would you be if you saw the video of your parents boinking in order to bring you into the world? Even if one of them was a Beatle?)
5 comments:
Wasn't this a banned book at some point? I don't know, with today's sexualized imagery for advertisements, I think kids would be less fazed by it than we might think. (Although that John and Yoko thing makes me think that I'd rather sit through a lecture filled with medical photos of flesh-eating bacterial infections.)
When I worked at the book store we ordered this book in for a customer whose taste in books was, as we used to say, "somewhat racy." When this arrived I wondered what the big deal was, and gave it a discreet perusal. I thought it was on one level inappropriate for him, and on another level inappropriate for children.
TLD: those are some formidably athletic positions those "grown-ups" are enjoying. The Space Hopper seems especially vulnerable to potential injury.
I checked to see if my library system carries it. Under "subject" it says:
Sex instruction for kids; reproduction.
hrm.
Never heard of this book, but I was interested to see that it's by the same author as "The Un-Wedding," which for years has held first place on my list of Most Evil Children's Books. It's about a child whose parents are getting divorced and what a fun and exciting thing that is, because if you look at it the right way, divorce is so much more fun than your silly parents living together, and you get two great big houses full of toys to play in now, plus you can have a big party! The book made me want to go find the author and spit on her. I figure she gets the same bolgia of hell as whoever wrote that Sesame Street skit about the little bird who learns that it's a *good* thing that her parents are getting divorced because now she'll have TWO nests when other little birds just get one.
(Both btw will be sharing a pit of burning excrement with the writer of the other fun Sesame St. piece with the catchy song "Any group of people/ living together/ and loving each other/ are doing the family thing!")
Not that I'm bitter about my childhood, mark you. But it's people like Ms. Cole who write for the modern guilt-ridden parent who contribute to the world's child-misery. Read the Amazon reviews of her Mommy Egg book; catch the mom whose 5-year-old asked if he could try the positions with his little girlfriend and make a baby. Yeah, there's no age too early for this stuff.
Sya - I've seen some of those bacterial pics, and I'd agree. Just a picture of them nekkid on the cover of "Two Virgins" was way more than enough for me.
Whisky - The clowns still bothers me the most.
entropy - I went back to the librarian in the kids section and asked if they had a flag or something for books like this, and he said they just assume that if a parent checks out a book on the topic, they know what they're getting into. I thought that was sensible.
TOHS - Hear hear. I actually surfed through her titles looking for other shite and didn't see that one. Gad. Off to read the reviews...this should be fun!
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