Bedtime stories gone awry (really weird children’s books)

I can still remember my favorite books that I read when I was a child. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go was my all time favorite. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Encyclopedia Brown, and Where the Sidewalk Ends were right up there as well. It’s a different generation now. It seems to me that people want kids to grow up a lot faster than before. Some of the children’s books out there now are downright weird. I personally believe that a lot of these subjects should be taught through life experience and not necessarily in a book, but whatever. I’m not technically licensed to practice psychology, so it doesn’t matter.

I Wish Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much

Price: $6.99

I guess alcoholism is worse than I thought in this country. I don’t know how many books a publisher has to sell to break even, but it has to be quite a few. Here’s the thing though: isn’t the hardest thing for an alcoholic to do is admit that they’re an alcoholic? If that’s the case, they wouldn’t buy this book because they would be saying “I don’t have a problem”. I would think that this would need to come in a package with a book about how to tell if you’re an alcoholic. Anyways, this book does have some interesting lines in it. Like this one:

“For Christmas, Daddy made me a sled. He brought it to my room on Christmas Eve. I knew it was only Daddy in a Santa Suit because he bumped into my bed twice and spilled beer on the rug.”

Dumb Daddy! If he’s going to walk around spilling on rugs, he needs to switch to vodka so that there is no odor.

The House That Crack Built

Price: $6.95

I remember reading The House That Jack Built. I loved it. This book takes that same rhyming style and turns it into a ghetto-fabulous tale of the dangers of crack, from start to finish. It begins with the exploited South American workers in the coca fields and goes all the way to the streets of the inner city.

“This is the street of a town in pain, this is the girl who is killing her brain”

I know, crack puts towns in pain and kills brains, but it builds houses like this:

If this book teaches anything, it’s that selling crack can buy you a sweet mansion.

Who Cares About Disabled People?

Price: $26.25 (WTF? It’s only 32 pages long!)

This is part of a Who Cares…? series. It basically is supposed to teach kids to love and care about everyone. Another book in this series is Who Cares About Elderly People? It was difficult to choose which wonderful life lesson to include here, as their titles are both equally head-scratching. I chose disabled people mostly for the reason of who they decide to include as examples.

So am I to believe that Kobe Bryant (athlete), David Hasselhoff (boozer), and Kevin Federline (fat kid) are all disabled? OK, I’ll give you Hasselhoff and Federline, but not Kobe. And what is the huffer in the this picture huffing? It looks like a bag of bubble gum.

Does God Love Michael’s Two Daddies?

Price: $7.95

Leave it to the homophobic right to decide whether Michael’s two daddies are going to heaven. In the book, Seth and Sarah are twins in a perfect, heterosexual, white Christian family. The poor kid next door (Michael) is the son of two unstable, interracial gay men. This book is awful in it’s attempt to veil the whole good vs. evil thing. It basically says that God loves everyone except the gays, that gay marriages aren’t real, and they’re all going to hell. One of the last lines says:

“Won’t it be wonderful when you two can read the words of the Bible for yourselves?”

And won’t it also be wonderful when they can think for themselves, too? Of course, this book was published by Apologetics Press, who make their living publishing we’re-right-and-you’re-not stuff like this. Oh, did I mention their former God-fearing, perfect director of 26 years was canned for “improper relations with young boys”? That’s right, he was gay and a child molester. Nothing like a little hypocrisy to go with your extreme religious views. If you’re going to talk the talk you better walk the walk. Just saying…

It’s Just a Plant

Price: $20.00

How early is too early for marijuana education? According to the publishers here, it’s 3 to 5 years old. This book is about a young girl who wakes up late one night and walks in on her parents smoking a doobie. I guess that’s better that her walking in while they are trying to make her a little brother, but this book goes through what they say to her to explain what it is they’re doing.

The story then shows the mother and daughter riding their bikes to see the marijuana farmer, and then to a doctor who explains that some adults use the drug (but that children absolutely should not). When they pass some stores and the child recognizes the now-familiar sweet smell, she sees a group of African-American men smoking. Implausibly, they stop and explain some details about marijuana. (And they didn’t offer the girl any. How rude!) Even more implausible, the potheads hold still when the police arrive. To top off the implausibilities is the officer who explains why the drug is illegal then lets the young men go with a simple warning. This book may tell the truth about the plant, but it blatantly lies about the repercussions.

Alfie’s Home

Price: $52.75 (Must be a collector’s item now as only used copies are available)

This one is just plain awful. Basically, it’s about a young boy whose parents fight all the time while ignoring him, an uncle that molests him, and when he becomes a teen the kids at school that call him “faggot” and “sissy”. The children that need to read this book will never see it because their parents don’t care and their uncles care too much.

Don’t worry, everything turns out perfect. You see, this book also teaches us that a single trip to the therapist fixes everything. Alfie went once, and now his parents are fine now and he is totally convinced he’s not gay. Oh, and his uncle apologized while crying, so all is forgiven there and the situation will never again affect his mental well-being. Ever.

Woher die Kinder kommen aus (where babies come from)

Price: Unknown

The Germans must really love sex and where babies come from. I kind of had to make up the name for this book, as there was no picture of the cover anywhere. All I could find was images of the pages, which is good enough. The pages are where the real magic is, because this is a children’s book that shows sexual penetration as well as this:

Yikes! This picture is equal parts disturbing and hilarious. This view should only be seen by a doctor, but the baby seems really happy to finally be out of there. And this isn’t even the most disturbing/hilarious picture in this book. It’s probably the first publication aimed at toddlers I’ve ever seen that has both male and female full frontal nudity on multiple pages. If you want to see the whole book, check it out here.

I’m curious to see what other subjects get tackled in future books for children. It’s only a matter of time before there is one called Mommy, Why Do We Live With Grandma Now? or I Used to Have My Own Room. I think I’ll write some about what I think is the biggest problems with America today. I’ll call them You Don’t Need Talent to be Famous, You Just Have To Make a Sex Tape and, for the parents out there, No! You Can’t Have That. Keep an eye out for those. In the meantime, just remember that crack builds awesome houses. It might be worth looking into.