Top Ten Children's Books NOT Recommended by the ALA

Sorry this blog fizzled out after a couple of entries. It's been a crazy year.

With that said, I've been going through some Sterilite containers that I've never touched since we moved almost two years ago. I found a bunch of my old journals (oh, the humanity...) and I'm pleased to say that, sorted out of the self-pitying crap and discarded story ideas, I did find something that made me laugh: an old list of made-up children's book titles that once graced the whiteboard in the bathroom at my very first job.

Years ago, I worked in our local mall bookstore, B. Dalton. This was, at the time, a division of the Barnes and Noble Corporation. Let me rephrase that; we were the RED-HEADED STEPCHILD of B&N. The red-headed stepchild that lived under the porch and was told not to come out during the day, lest it be seen by the neighbors.

It was my first retail job, and it was a VERY good introduction to the Horrible World of Retail. I have literally hundreds of stories from those four amusing and terrifying years, which I will relate from time to time in the future. But for now, you should know that the employees were a pretty interesting crew, and I still have close contact with at least three of my former co-workers (Mary Jo, Lucile, and Nathan...excuse me, Dr. Stice.) Like most intelligent people working in a job that offered limited pay and benefits, and which required enormous amounts of both mental and physical labor plus the ability to deal with a customer base that almost defies description, we developed into some of the most cynical smart-asses you've ever seen in your life.

Working in the book trade quickly disabuses you of the notion that the reading public are a bunch of nerdy bookworms. In fact, the opposite is usually true. While millions of Americans don't read, the ones that do tend to read utter, steaming, vile, ill-written CRAP. I would estimate that over 50% of all people who read for pleasure NEVER read anything more intellectually challenging than a Harlequin romance. It's goddamn frustrating when you're a book lover, to stand in a space filled with fantastic books from all over the world, books like 1984 and Dune and Sense and Sensibility and The Great Gatsby, and to realize that those books are the ones that sit on the shelves, gathering dust until the day they're sent back to the publisher for credit or, worse, their covers are stripped off and the remaining disfigured book is THROWN IN THE TRASH.  Meanwhile, the True Crime, "Self-Help", and Bodice-Ripper sections empty out every month, carried off by slavering twats who pat themselves on the back for being "readers" and think themselves mighty fine.

Even among those who read good things, there's an enormous reliance on the opinons of others when choosing what to read, or what to buy as a gift. We happened to be working in books at the very, very beginning of that cultural phenomenon of the '90s that must be written in capital letters to give a sense of its importance: OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB. By and large, we approved of it. It got people reading, there were some very good books on the list, and it definitely sent sales way, way up. But so many of the people who participated in it didn't want to read anything that Her Winfreyness hadn't recommended. We'd suggest things similar to the items the customers had purchased in the past (for example, if someone had read and enjoyed Song of Solomon, I'd invariably pitch The Color Purple. And was rewarded, every time, with blank stares and occasional outright hostility. After all, what did I know. Was I OPRAH? Obviously NOT.)

Another source of information that people relied heavily on was the American Library Association's list of Notable Children's Books. Now, don't get me wrong, this is an invaluable resource and the titles are usually fantastic. But again, people who based the purchases on the list tended to be AMAZINGLY resistant to suggestions of other, equally good children's books. Whether it was our frustration at this behavior, our general stress, or just pure cussedness, one late Saturday night, when we were packing returns long after the mall had closed, we came up with our OWN list of children's books...a list that would never make the Notable category, no matter how well they sold. This was directly inspired by a David Letterman Top Ten list from the early '90s (I'll dig it up and post it as a comment later) but on the whole, I think ours were better.

Here you go. Enjoy...I think. And yes, you will note that there are 13 titles, not ten. So sue me. We were tired and getting giggly, and couldn't be stopped.

TOP TEN CHILDREN'S BOOKS NOT RECOMMENDED BY THE ALA:

13. Tell Us About Sex, Amelia Bedelia! 
12. Frog and Toad Are Domestic Partners
11. The Little Engine That Couldn't
10. Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame Scratch and Sniff
9. Clifford Gets Fixed 
8. Goosebumps #3528: "It Came From the Colostomy Bag" 
7. Everyone Poops (the Pop-Up Edition) 
6. Quacker Meets Mr Decoy and Mr Hunter
5. The Klutz Kid's Book of Knives
4. Baby's First Satanic Bible 
3. The Magic School Bus in a Full-Scale Nuclear Exchange
2. The Berenstain Bears Learn About Incest
1. Curious George and the Big Bag of Crack