Ah, memories. My mom saved lots of books from when I was a kid, and the boys love to read them. Needless to say, they have become a little ‘worn.’ For example, “Green Eggs and Ham” is in 3 pieces, only 2 of which are locatable at any one time.
So the other day I decided to grab new copies of some Dr. Seuss books at Amazon. Innocently, I chose The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. I didn’t have my childhood copy, but I thought the boys would enjoy a sequel. Well, like so many others, this sequel is not as good as the original.
I’m happily reading along when I come to the part where Cat A, B and their friends use GUNS to KILL some dirty snow! Am I a complete freak, or is this insane to have in a kids book? It never occured to me to “pre-read” a Dr. Seuss book, but I’ve learned my lesson.
Yes, it was a good conversation starter for us. The boys already know how I feel about guns. We’ll be in Target and they’ll see an action figure with guns, and they’ll say “We don’t want that at our house because it has guns!”
But of course, that is just the voice outside their head. On the inside they’re saying “OMFG I WANT A BATMAN WITH PISTOLS!!!! AND A RIFLE!!! AND HEY, IS THAT A STICK OVER THERE?”
To me it doesn’t matter that they are “just” pop-guns. I give a thumbs-down to violence, even when sanitized by cartoonery. But other than the guns (Mrs. Lincoln) the book isn’t too bad. So here is my Guide to De-Gunning Your Copy of “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”
Fortunately, Dr. Seuss was nice enough to make it very easy to slice out the pages with guns on them. There are 3 pages in the middle that can be Exacto-ed out neatly and with no one the wiser. If you’ve plucked out the right pages, this is what you’ll see:
Then you’ll just need to make some editorial changes to this page:
I used whiteout and changed “kill” to “get” myself. But hey, be creative, get out that Thesaurus! And have a great weekend. Think of me on Sunday… I’ll be 39! O.M.G.
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