Expectations in Children's Literature

Sometimes I feel like a bit of a snob when it comes to children's literature. I have simple expectations from what I share with kids, but sometimes they seem too high when compared with the options currently available. I want a good story that is fun to read aloud. I want decent illustrations that don't look like they came from the Dollar Store. And darn it, I want the subject matter to be appropriate.

I remember when I was trying to do book reviews for people. One of the books I got was about a cow that had a farting problem. Really? Now, I come from a family where flatulence is funny, but we never expected it to be in literature. Gassy the Cow and Walter the Farting Dog just do not strike me as great reads.

I have Kindle on my Droid and I am a free ebook junkie. I peruse the Amazon Kindle store at least once a week. I finally came across a bunch of free children's ebooks to download. But I noticed that a lot of them are about burping and other stinky stuff.

Yes, it makes kids laugh. Yes, I chuckle when I see a lot of it. But I hate reading it to kids. They often have a hard time determining when the jokes are appropriate and where to draw the line. I don't think they provide any kind of teaching experience.

And I am not saying that all books need to be a teaching experience. Some of them should just be fun. But the moral values of society today seem to be deteriorating rapidly. I just think that children's books shouldn't be contributing to that decline.

GBE 2 Challenge

I don't know how frequently it will fit in, but there is a weekly blogging challenge that I joined. On Sundays, a topic is posted in the Group Blogging Experience group on Facebook. We are supposed to blog on that topic, if we can find a way to make it fit in. I realized that I was able to fit the first topic in all of my blogs, and yes, I am behind by a day. But that is okay. I am still going to do it, anyway. :-)