Sunday, October 1, 2017

Bad books

I have a friend from Brasil who is expecting a little girl in a few weeks. In preparation for her shower, I wanted to get her some books in Portuguese.* I did manage to find one that was all Portuguese (not English/Portuguese) with a cute picture of a sloth on the front. It seemed like a possibility, so I ordered it.

When it arrived, of course I flipped through it. I am not remotely fluent in Portuguese, but I can pick up on quite a bit as I do know Spanish, more or less.** The gist of the book, from what I picked up, was that this sloth fell asleep everywhere--the bank, school, etc. Not a compelling story, but whatever. Then, on the last page, the sloth falls asleep at the wheel of the car, and the picture shows the sloth behind the steering wheel with the airbag deploying! WHO WRITES A PICTURE BOOK LIKE THIS?!?!?!?!

I get the desire to teach kids safety, but really? In a picture book? For little kids? With a cute sloth? And maybe I'm missing some key detail in my lack of Portuguese, but the airbag was hard to miss.

No. Just no.***


*It is really hard to find Portuguese books in the US. Can we fix this? But, I did check out Amazon and Walmart's Brasil sites. Who knew Walmart was a thing in Brasil?
**Usually less, methinks.
***This book will be returned. I'd like to not cause my friend's baby trauma. 

No comments:

Post a Comment