Hmm…I seem to have forgotten about this little feature on my blog. Perhaps ‘forgotten’ is not quite the word. Neglected. It’s a shame really, because it allows me to take stock of all the articles and interesting and/or bewildering and/or freaky bits of information that is the raison d’etre of Twitter. Too many to mention here. Fresh start then, with just a few highlights from the last few weeks.
Starting with…the poop on bodily functions in kids’ books. Trust me…this is an interesting article, and certainly relevant if you work in a bookstore or a library. As a former employee of a bookstore, let me just say that I’d be more inclined to like Walter the Farting Dog if the illustrations were good, which they’re not. But then again, how do you visually compete with a farting dog? It’s not a bad book, it’s quite funny in fact, but what bothers me is that William Kotzwinkle, the author of this treatise on canine gas emissions, is a very fine writer of adult fiction, and once you’ve absorbed Walter and his farts, I would highly recommend that you read The Bear Went Over the Mountain, or any of his other books. But I digress. In my 12-odd years at the bookstore, I don’t recall any customer, young or old, being offended by this book, or Good Families Don’t, or The Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business (which has some rather gorgeous illustrations by Wolf Erlbruch), but strangely enough, many adults did have trouble asking for How to Shit in the Woods, our most popular (and no doubt, most useful) hiking guide. Without fail, the ‘shit’ was either whispered, or omitted altogether from the recitation of the title. It’s OK people, everybody poops.
