I almost forgot about Banned Books Week! Boy, it sure doesn’t feel like a whole year ago that I read Catcher in the Rye.
Okay, looking at ALA’s list of the top ten most challenged books of the year, well, gee. The only one we have in the house (besides Catcher and I am NOT reading that again) is one from the Captain Underpants series. To be precise, Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets.
So I took a look at it — and I wish you could have seen Joey’s face when he saw what I was reading, oh ha ha! — and you know what? This book SHOULD be banned!
Whoa! Did someone else log in under my name? Bookworm, the champion of free speech and detester of all censorship? No, it’s really me, and of course I don’t really think Captain Underpants (or any other book) should be banned. But this one comes mighty close. In case you’re not familiar with the series, it’s about these two kids who have potty-humorous adventures. Nothing wrong with potty humor, of course; it’s rampant in my house. No, the problem is this: in between adventures the kids create their own comic strip which is reproduced in the book, and the comic strip is full of kid-like errors of grammar and spelling. Yes indeed, folks, this book, which is MEANT TO BE READ BY CHILDREN, is FULL of DELIBERATE ERRORS. And I cannot — cannot! — condone that.
4 Comments
So does Junie B. Jones drive you up a wall, too? My mother was beside herself when she read one of those to my son a few years ago. I haven’t shown her any of Dav Pilkey’s books.
YES!! Junie TOTALLY drives me up the wall. In fact, my first draft of this post included a rant about Junie. I forget why I deleted it. What a curmudgeon I am, huh.
I’m 100% w/ you about no deliberate grammos or spelling errors in kid’s books unless it was a small part of the plot. (ex. schoolwork or such.)
Wow, you sure grew up fast! ;)Lovely header!Classic, rich and deeply engrossing, not to mention the cultural info! You look so sophisitcated, my dear that I didn’t recognize you! I like it!
Yeah, it’s a whole nother thing when it’s part of the plot. Like the spelling bee in Little Town on the Prairie. Or the Ramona Quimby book where she misunderstands the lyrics of the national anthem. And I also have no problem with the phrase “a whole nother.” :)
It’s also a whole nother thing when the book isn’t intended for kids. There’s Huck Finn, of course, which contains deliberate misspellings as well as bad-grammar dialect. Another that comes to mind is Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang, which uses bad English for an amazing, perfect effect.
Confession about the header: what I said in the sidebar about looking just like her? I exaggerated. ;)