This week, I am reviewing Down on the Farm by Merrily Kutner, illustrated by Will Hillenbrand. I have chosen this seemingly innocuous book as a shining example of the second of three of my literature pet peeves that need to be remedied. This book is a cute book about a farm and has animal noises to teach to young kids. Great! I think that is important to learn. Unfortunately, that is really hard to concentrate on when you see this on the first page:
The second of my three literature pet peeves is the dedication.
The setting: I won't even dignify that with a response.
The characters: Goat, sheep, duck, dog, horse, the author's dead daughter, and Sheri Woodward, whoever the hell that is.
Have you ever made somebody a really nice present? Have you ever spent hours and hours on a gift for someone, putting love and time and energy into it, and then, rather than give it to that person to enjoy, you sell it to a publishing company for a ton of money but pretend that you made it for them? That's what a dedication page is. If you want to show someone how much they mean to you, you sit down and write a book and then give it to them. If you want to make money writing books, you sit down and write a book and then sell it. Do you see the subtle difference there? Those two sentiments are sort of mutually exclusive. Choose only one, my friends.
It was a hard day of working my typical middle class white collar job. I get home from work and see my daughter for the first time since I left in the morning. She is excited that I'm home, and she comes running over to see me with a book in hand for me to read to her. I've barely had a chance to walk through the door, but I love the way her face lights up when we snuggle up on the couch to read a book. We hop on the couch, open up the book, and BAM! Dead children. Just what I needed to think about today.
Now, some of you may be saying, "you are being too harsh on this woman. Her daughter died and maybe she loved farms. She wrote this book to get over her pain of losing her kid." Fine. I'll concede that as a possibility. Maybe that is true. Merrily could have very easily just mentioned that on the press tour for the book, but if she wanted that to be part of the story and for that emotion to be part of the book, then fine. I agree that people who lose their children are allowed to do pretty much anything they want. What about Will Hillebrand? Could you be any bigger of a douche bag than to try to dedicate your stupid pictures to anybody other than the author's dead child????? When Merrily decided to dedicate this book to her deceased daughter, Will should have just bowed out of the dedication game. Just give up, dude. Dedicate your next book to whoever the hell Sheri is. You look like a petty, clueless loser.... unless, of course, "down on the farm" is really just another way of saying "bought the farm", in which case, Will, you are equally as guilty as Merrily for dedicating this book to your dead friend. In fact, this whole book has just taken on a whole new sad and eerie meaning.
Dead horses.
Dead pigs.
In summation, the rest of this book really isn't that bad. It's pretty cute minus some really bad rhyming attempts. Lily loves it and she gives it 5 out of 5 stars. You can pick up this book at Amazon for $6.26, which is $.01 for the book and $6.25 for the weight of the heart of the author that wrote it. For more horrible imagery that makes you want to cry when you thought you were going to laugh, check out my new one man show Josh Strangles a Clown. Happy reading!
