Kids’ books….it’s complicated.

I’ve always let the kids pick out their own library books, throwing a few of my favourites in the mix and keeping them away from the “A” section (because those Thomas books are way too long, and let’s face it: they freaky).  I usually flip through to make sure there’s no previous damage (you aren’t getting another penny from me, SPL) or that they’re not too wordy.

But maybe I need to spend a little more time sussing out the books, or at least pre-reading them.

Wednesday night’s story: Sammy the Spider goes to school.  Awesome, because soon, B will be…Going to School.  And spiders rock.  Did you know that Sammy the Spider is Jewish?  Which is cool, but raises certain questions that I just don’t know quite how to explain.  One of which being,  “Do I get to wear a hat when I go to school?”, followed by “Why are those guys wearing those hats?”   Uhh….that’s me in the corner.   I see, after coming to the end and the booklist, that most of Sammy’s other adventures are a little more clearly defined, such as Sammy’s First Hanukkah and Sammy’s First Shabbat. I am totally open to sharing religions, I just need to do a little research myself, because Moms know Everything.

Tonight’s selection, a wonderful little tale called One More Wednesday. Great.  A simple tale, with a moderate amount of words, a great wrap up as we’ve read 3 stories so far and I’m getting a little tired of hearing my own voice (ha!!).  I knew the story started to take a turn when the little bunny couldn’t visit Granny one Wednesday, because she was in the hospital. Next up, Mommy bunny’s on the phone and then started crying, because: GRANNY DIED.  Whaaaaa?  I was tempted to make something up, because, please can we go back to asking about the Jewish “hats” because I don’t want to go down this road!  Some kind of warning, somewhere on the book would have been nice, like way before I got to page 5 when Granny was never coming back.  (um, spoiler alert.)

So yeah, while I really try to stay away from reading commercial-type books like Dora the Explorer, it might be a safer choice some days as you can be sure all Abuela is going to be doing is serving up some rice pudding and won’t up and die on ya…