Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Thanks Mom!
I got a large flat cardboard mailer today. Well, I didn't get it, it was addressed to the kluth boys. Inside was a blast from my past, a book called "What Do You Say Dear?" I was excited to share it with the boys who were awake (Toby was upstairs in his closet.). I started out reading it with the same tones and inflections I remember my own mother reading it to me with. Until I came to the cowboy page. I changed my tone and read a little quicker as I came across the following words: "You are a cowboy riding around the range. Suddenly Bad-Nose Bill comes uop behind you with a gun. He says, 'Would you like me to shoot a hole in your head?' What do you say, dear?" I don't remember this book being quite so violent!!! I guess reading it to a houseful of girls makes it a different experience for a Mom than reading it to a houseful of boys!
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4 comments:
I've read that book, too, and I don't remember the cowboy scene. Funny about that.
I'll have to read that one. I'd never even heard of it before now!
I hadn't heard of it, either, until I got it at the library sale in June. I just showed it to Drew and he said he had it as a child, too. Must be a classic, huh? Yes, the cowboys are violent, but what about the smoke breathing dragon whose head gets cut off by the knight? I guess that's person to dragon violence instead of person to person, though, huh?
Know what? I truly think that this kind of violence was commonplace in books of this era b/c it wasn't so "real" in most people's lives. For instance, the "columbines" on one of the first pages didn't stir up images of children covered with blood like they might nowadays. Then, when you read about cowboys shooting a hole in another's head, more "Columbine" like images may come up. What do you think?
I wasn't thinking of Columbine, but did note that my kids have no idea what a columbine is, heck, I don't even know if I could pick one out!
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