By Samantha Wassel of Between the Monkey Bars
A locally run daycare in the small town of Uppity, NY recently released a list of books that it considers “sinfully inappropriate,” “dangerous,” and “emotionally and developmentally crippling” for children under the age of —
“Infinity,” stated Erma Prude, founder of Holier Than Thou Daycare, as she peered at our reporter’s notes through the glasses balanced precariously on the tip of her beakish nose. “Children under the age of infinity. Every book on this list is absolute garbage, and it’s our responsibility to keep this smut away from impressionable young minds.”
Prude recently returned from a medical leave of absence and was appalled to find the Chipmunk Room of her daycare stocked with—in her words—“Lucifer’s Literature.” Apparently, a few parents had organized a book drive for HTT Daycare after learning that the only books on its shelves were the Bible, The Secret, and Joel Olsteen’s collective works.
A fellow daycare worker—who requested to remain anonymous—informed us that Prude’s time off was spent recovering from a complicated surgery attempting to remove the large stick up her ass. Our sources tell us that the surgery was unsuccessful.
Among the books currently banned from HTT is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which Prude claims “condones gluttony” and is “feeding the childhood obesity problem in this country.”
Here is the complete list of banned books, as well as Prude’s reasons for keeping them out of her establishment.
1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “As I mentioned earlier, it promotes gluttony and obesity. Furthermore, on the page with the pictures of all the food the caterpillar ate on Saturday, that ‘cupcake’ is clearly a muffin. We don’t want our kids to be fat, sinful, AND stupid.”
2. Green Eggs and Ham. “GREEN eggs and ham? It might as well be titled, Hey Kids! Food Poisoning is Fun! Who wants their kids thinking it’s kosher to ingest green meat? Not to mention the fact that the protagonist is asked to eat the food in question with a fox. Spoiled meat and rabies—that’s what every parent wants for her kids.”
3. The Giving Tree. “This piece of crap totally undermines the concept of ‘stranger danger.’ Seriously. So this kid is just walking around one day, and a random tree is like, ‘Oh heyyyyy, unsupervised little boy! Come swing in my branches! Come eat my apples! Come climb up my trunk!’ Sexual symbolism at its finest. Euphemistic smut, that’s what it is. Quite honestly, I was surprised to find that Shel Silverstein never made it onto the sex offender registry. Yes, I checked.”
4. Llama Llama Red Pajama. “I pretty much disapprove of any book where animals act like humans or have the ability to speak. It’s unnatural, and it raises questions about witchcraft and the occult that we’re just not prepared to answer here.”
5. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. “Oh, Lord Almighty.” (Prude paused here to make the sign of the cross.) “The title alone sounds like something out of a bad porno. Then you’ve got that suggestive set of ‘coconuts’ on the cover, paired with the refrain of ‘Will there be enough room?’ throughout the book. What are they getting at? The only place that thing belongs is under some pervert’s pillow. Or a bonfire.”
6. The entire Curious George series. “Okay, if curiosity killed the cat, that filthy little monkey should have been dead a long time ago. We don’t want to encourage our children to butt their noses in where they don’t belong. Or to go exploring. Or to ask questions about things they don’t understand.”
7. Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? “To be honest, we’re just really f***ing sick of making all those stupid noises. Oh, fiddlesticks, can you take the word f***ing off the record?”
8. Love You Forever. “It’s just downright disturbing. This grown man goes to his dying mother’s house and creepily rocks her—presumably to her death—in his arms. I mean, if she’s so sick, why isn’t she in a nursing home? Under hospice care? SOMETHING? I think there’s more to the story here, and I’m not prepared to answer questions if the children pick up on the blatant plot gaps. We don’t promote senicide in this establishment.”
9. Pat the Bunny. “I’m pretty sure this entire series is some sort of sick sexual allegory. We don’t need our little boys running around and asking the girls if they’d like to ‘pat’ their ‘bunnies.’ Besides, have you ever noticed the bunny is white in all the books? What do I tell the racially-diverse students when they start asking where all the colored bunnies are? Out in the fields, working for Peter COTTONtail? Besides, that amorphous bunny kind of creeps me out.”
10. Any “touch and feel” books. “Do you really need me to elaborate on what these might lead to?”
Prude currently has a framed copy of HTT’s banned booklist hanging on the wall in the Chipmunk Room, next to a poster of the Ten Commandments.
She’s also sent copies home with the children, along with her priest’s contact information, in case any parents were exposed to the books as kids and feel compelled to confess their sins now that she’s “helped them see the light.”
“I’m just doing what I can to make this world a better place,” she says.
Related Post: Seven Things I Don’t Want to Hear When My Kid Is Screaming at the Grocery Store
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About the Author
Samantha Wassel is a Stay-At-Home Mama to the cutest twin toddlers in the history of all Toddlerdom. When she’s not running her borderline-offensive mouth, she’s running masochistically long distances, often with the aforementioned toddlers in tow. She enjoys reading, writing, baking, marathoning, complaining, photographing, playgrounding, and Ghirardelli Midnight Reverie chocolate bars. Her writing has been featured on Scary Mommy, Club Mid, In the Powder Room, Bluntmoms, and Mamalode. Follow her on Facebook and check out her personal blog, Between the Monkey Bars.