hollowspine's review
1.0
I’ve read some pretty heavy handed children’s books before, but this audiobook took it to a new level. The first story of the book is possibly the best, it is introduced with, ‘submitted for your approval,’ which warmed me with nostalgia for one of my favorite childhood television shows, “Are You Afraid of the Dark,” and instantly made me decide to listen to the rest of it. Mistake.
Each story seems to have some ham fisted and extremely hammy idea of instilling some moral takeaway into the listeners.
Take for example the story “Another Take on Halloween” which is about how monsters became feared by children. They started out perfectly friendly, but during an argument over a piece of candy they became so enraged at each other that they frightened away all the letters of the alphabet except for the brave G and R which then limited their conversations with children to GRRR and turned them from friends into frights. However, one little girl discovers the missing letters and returns them to her friend monster who was clever enough to say nothing at all. They take them to the monster who started the fight and that monster is finally able to say the word he couldn’t all these years, “Sorry.” After that they had a huge party with candy and games and toys, which is why we continue to celebrate Halloween to this day. (Though this doesn’t explain why children still find monsters scary).
That wasn’t even the most offensive story. Each story has a “and that’s why you never…” or “and so we learned always to…” at the end of the story, as if we needed something even more blunt to figure out each lesson.
What makes the whole thing even worse is the terrible voice acting. At one point one of the narrators puts on a terrible supposedly Mexican accent for reasons quite unknown. The story had absolutely nothing in it to indicate a need for an accent of any type, let alone the cringe inducing accent given.
Littered throughout the stories are other bizarre Halloween inspired noises. Things you might hear when approaching the house of that neighbor who starts decorating their lawn with tombstones after the fourth of July and bought their own fog dispersal unit, except not cool. The noises sometimes make sense in context, but for the most part they seem just tossed in for some extra flavor. It was almost hilariously bad, except for the messages, which were often more damaging than helpful, such as, the last story which is about a person named Millisphore who is apparently the most evil person in the world. Although Millisphore is able to take the joy out of leaving the house, sadly the power of love cannot be defeated. So Millisphore runs home to their parents who love him no matter what, which goes to show that no matter how evil you are someone will still love you. Okaaay.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the story about the Goblins who insult everyone, but don’t realize that each time they utter an insult they grow more and more ugly until dun dun dun they become trolls! Once they realize they’ve become trolls they despair because their unkind words turned them into monsters. But...they were already goblins?
Who could forget the story about the ‘wicked wizard’ who enchanted everybody’s tongues to only say mean things and the ‘good wizard’ who decided the best way to solve this horrible insulting tongue curse was to enchant everyone’s ears so that they’d close whenever they heard mean things...wait how does that solve anything? So the lesson is, when you hear someone say something mean, just ignore it and eventually they’ll stop being mean? Sure. And maybe Luno will swoop down with MC Bat Commander and we’ll all have a wicked beach party. That’d be nice.
Each story seems to have some ham fisted and extremely hammy idea of instilling some moral takeaway into the listeners.
Take for example the story “Another Take on Halloween” which is about how monsters became feared by children. They started out perfectly friendly, but during an argument over a piece of candy they became so enraged at each other that they frightened away all the letters of the alphabet except for the brave G and R which then limited their conversations with children to GRRR and turned them from friends into frights. However, one little girl discovers the missing letters and returns them to her friend monster who was clever enough to say nothing at all. They take them to the monster who started the fight and that monster is finally able to say the word he couldn’t all these years, “Sorry.” After that they had a huge party with candy and games and toys, which is why we continue to celebrate Halloween to this day. (Though this doesn’t explain why children still find monsters scary).
That wasn’t even the most offensive story. Each story has a “and that’s why you never…” or “and so we learned always to…” at the end of the story, as if we needed something even more blunt to figure out each lesson.
What makes the whole thing even worse is the terrible voice acting. At one point one of the narrators puts on a terrible supposedly Mexican accent for reasons quite unknown. The story had absolutely nothing in it to indicate a need for an accent of any type, let alone the cringe inducing accent given.
Littered throughout the stories are other bizarre Halloween inspired noises. Things you might hear when approaching the house of that neighbor who starts decorating their lawn with tombstones after the fourth of July and bought their own fog dispersal unit, except not cool. The noises sometimes make sense in context, but for the most part they seem just tossed in for some extra flavor. It was almost hilariously bad, except for the messages, which were often more damaging than helpful, such as, the last story which is about a person named Millisphore who is apparently the most evil person in the world. Although Millisphore is able to take the joy out of leaving the house, sadly the power of love cannot be defeated. So Millisphore runs home to their parents who love him no matter what, which goes to show that no matter how evil you are someone will still love you. Okaaay.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the story about the Goblins who insult everyone, but don’t realize that each time they utter an insult they grow more and more ugly until dun dun dun they become trolls! Once they realize they’ve become trolls they despair because their unkind words turned them into monsters. But...they were already goblins?
Who could forget the story about the ‘wicked wizard’ who enchanted everybody’s tongues to only say mean things and the ‘good wizard’ who decided the best way to solve this horrible insulting tongue curse was to enchant everyone’s ears so that they’d close whenever they heard mean things...wait how does that solve anything? So the lesson is, when you hear someone say something mean, just ignore it and eventually they’ll stop being mean? Sure. And maybe Luno will swoop down with MC Bat Commander and we’ll all have a wicked beach party. That’d be nice.
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