Enfeebling Our Youth

I read an excerpt from a book to my nieces yesterday. The book is titled "Junie B. Jones is Not a Crook," by Barbara Park. I don't read aloud often, and I had an extremely difficult time reading this book to them. It wasn't because of my lack of narration experience or my level of education. It wasn't because I was utterly exhausted after a day of running around, chasing three young children and trying to get them to eat their vegetables and take their baths. The problem was the way the book was written. Here is an example:

I runned all around the tree. "911! 911! 911! I hollered. "SOMEBODY STOLED THEM! SOMEBODY STOLED MY MITTENS!" Mrs. Came very quick. Mrs. bended down next to me. "Who, Junie B.? Who stole them?" she asked. "A stealer, that's who! A stealer stoled them! And so what kind of school is this? 'Cause I didn't even know there was crooks at this place!" Mrs. said calm down my voice. I looked at the ground real sad. "Now all I have left is my dumb attractive jacket."

I immediately stopped reading this abomination of a children's book and proceeded to read "James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl. I couldn't, in good conscience, subject my nieces to such flotsam. This Junie B. book was horrible!

I love how somebody 'stoled' her shit. That author is certainly setting a great standard for children and parents who read to them. There had to be some explanation as to why she chose to write the entire book with bad grammar and spelling. I did some research and found that the method behind her lunacy was telling the story from the point of view of a kindergartener so that other kids can relate and understand.

Just when I thought that the world couldn't get any more ignorant, something like this happens to me. I'm not an expert on education, but if you want children to become smarter, shouldn't you speak to them in proper English? Barbara Park is one of the reasons why America's literacy rate is less than spectacular. Parents have to work extra hard to counteract the damage that kids are being exposed to when they're reading books featuring Junie B. Jones. I bet that the children's books in Finland are much better, considering their literacy rate is higher than America's literacy rate. I'd feel at ease knowing that my children would read stories about Magnus and Tanja finding the person who STOLE their mittens. They'd even go a step further by rehabilitating the thief and making him or her a productive member of Finnish society before the end of the story.

What makes me cringe is that parents are recommending this book to other parents. I read reviews of this book on Amazon.com and twenty one out of twenty one reviews had this piece of crap at five stars. Nikki Evans, from Piqua (Ohio), writes:

"My daughter started reading these at 4 and loves them. She just laughs and laughs. They are written just like little kids talk and they are really cute. We have almost all of the Junie B. books and this is one of my favorites."

Two things about her review scared the shit out of me. She first talks about how it's written like little kids talk. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't go around bragging about how my kids don't know proper English. The second thing is that there is more than one book written by Barbara Park. GAAH! I submitted a negative review about this book and Amazon.com has yet to post it. Barbara Park's family must work in the quality control and feedback department.

I feel like I'm in an episode the Twilight Zone where everyone is stupid and nobody knows that they're stupid and they think that I'm the stupid one because I'm not reading the same books as they are. In the same episode, all the people are wearing coulottes because they think it's cool and the men like to have sex with women.