Truly Abysmal Children’s Literature

I’ve done a lot of book reviews for Chalcedon, and I thought you might like me to share them with you.

Some of these books were breathtakingly, astoundingly bad. Here’s a book supposedly written for children under 12–Spartan and the Green Egg: The Poachers of Tiger Mountain.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/book-review-of-spartan-and-the-green-egg-the-poachers-of-tiger-mountain

Looking back on it, this book is more hair-raisingly awful than it seemed while I was reading it. Conferring virtual omnipotence on children, by means of insanely high technology, is not an idea I can get comfortable with.

And what would possess any mother to name her baby “Spartan”?

This book is just so incredibly bad, I might actually be afraid to read it to a child. What if it puts him off reading for life? What if he gets mad at me for insulting his intelligence?

But worst of all–

What if he thinks it’s good?

I wake up screaming.

Book Review: ‘Spartan and the Green Egg: the Poachers of Tiger Mountain’

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Shame on us if we can’t do better than this, in producing children’s literature.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/book-review-of-spartan-and-the-green-egg-the-poachers-of-tiger-mountain

How dumb, how gullible, do publishers think children are? And are you comfortable with the idea of a piece of extraterrestrial technology that’s virtually omnipotent and can, and will, give a bunch of kids anything and everything they ask for–instantly?

The more I think about these books, the less I like them. “Egg” the spaceship is presented to us as a machine, but it acts more like a god. And if you think absolute godlike power is a good thing for any children to have, you’re flat-out crazy.

Please! We just have to do better!

Speaking for myself, if God gave me everything I ever asked for, that would be proof He hated me.