1/15/2007

Ages 5-8

One of the biggest things I learned in college is to always be on the look-out for the absurd. In this great country of ours you can never know when something totally ridiculous and completely amazing at the same time is going to jump out at you and slap you a few time across the face. Of course the slapping sorta takes the challenge out of finding these icons of the strange, but I'm sliding off on a tangent here.

Anyways, I was at Target one day just killing some time when I stumbled upon this little Gem;




Thats right....."Twister On Tuesday." It took roughly .005 seconds for me to snatch this thing up and give it much more careful study. I found it was for Ages 5-8. Perfect, that meant that Ms. Mary Pope Osborne felt that children not old enough to get the truth behind Rover going to a "special farm" was capable of handling a story about two children dealing with the dangers of possible morbid death due to what most insurance company's consider "An Act of God." I could only fathom two possible outcomes to this book. When little Timmy is done he is either going to literally piss himself when ever he sees Daddy watching the weather report, or when the Sky's grow dark and the funnel clouds show up he's going to think it's play time. It's win-win really....

At this point I started getting a bit shifty because to me, this book was a gold mine. I look up to make sure that nobody else noticed my facial expressions of confusion and joy, thus cluing them into this vortex of violence, grief, and children's literature. It's at this point that I discovered that this book, was but one of many. And they were all displayed before me like some alter of a strange author god..... Here are some of my "favorites"....







I'm just going to go ahead and wait while you soak this in a bit.

No, you Have to see that again, trust me. You just can't glance at those and get all that there is to get. Thirty Seconds, each cover, at the very least.

Ok, now that you have basked in the glory that is Mary Pope Osborne I must tell you that it is now my challenge to meet this woman. I want to meet her and ask her a whole list of questions. I honestly think that in that cracked out head of hers that the answers to everything may be locked up, if only someone were stupid enough to sit down and force them out of her.

I have to tell ya, If Timmy is a huge fan of the series, then Timmy is so screwed. Chances are he's going to be a Agoraphobic before he's 9.... And thats some awesome and yet terrifying power to wield people....