Twelve Terrible Things

Yesterday while I was working, I got to handle what might be one of the scariest things that a librarian might ever encounter: A book challenge. A patron came into the library with a picture book she had read to her three-year-old son, Twelve Terrible Things by Marty Kelley. She explained that she felt that the book should be shelved with the adults materials because it was inappropriate for young children.

This book features twelve two-page spreads, each showing vivid illustrations demonstrating some sort of childhood trauma. These incidents range from a scoop of ice cream falling off of a cone to a visit to the dentist to an incredibly mean-looking birthday clown. All of the illustrations are done as if from the perspective of the child, making some of these terrible things incredibly large and dramatic and - if you put yourself in the shoes of the child - kind of scary or intimidating at times. The number of words on each page is very sparse, allowing the illustrations to do most of the talking.

This book is a work of dark humor. It uses exaggeration to poke fun at the childhood traumas - older kids and even adults will likely be able to look at these "terrible things" with humor and even nostalgia. The book is perfectly arranged and blends words and pictures in such a way as to make these incidents truly creepy and scary at the same time though, and the humor is very dark.

So why did this mother object to this book? Well, very young children like her three-year-old son lack the life experience and the mental repertoire to appreciate this book. In order for this book to be funny, one has to be somewhat past the stage where these events are traumatic so that they can be looked back upon. To really "get" this book, the reader needs to be able to recognize that yes, these events are horrible in the eyes of children, but in the grand scheme of things it's not necessarily all that bad. Preschoolers just can't do that yet. A very young child like this woman's son wants to know why, for example, the goldfish is being flushed down the toilet. This invites darkness and trauma into the life of a child who perhaps has yet to experience these sorts of emotions. The woman who objected to Twelve Terrible Things wanted the book removed from the children's collection to save other children - and their parents - from this sort of trauma.

And I completely understand this woman's concerns. Often when we talk about book challenges, we think of closed-minded people who object to sex or violence and feel (often wrongly) that these elements are inappropriate for children of the age that the book is being used with. But in this case, the mother admitted to me that she herself thought the book was great. The book just wasn't appropriate for her son's age group, which I completely agree with. But does that mean that the picture book should be removed from the collection? After all, I'm sure that an older, school-age child would have the mental capacity to appreciate and find humor in this book. Should we have a separate collection of picture books for older readers? Or should parents simply do a better job of previewing materials before they use them with their children? These are all very relevant questions that this challenge has brought up, and I am interested to see what comes of it.

Overall Grade: A-