A review by buer
The 13-Story Treehouse: Monkey Mayhem! by Andy Griffiths
1.0
First and foremost, we should admit that this book was not written for me. It was written for kids and me not liking it really only means that I don't fall into the demographic that it was aimed at. I bought this book for my nephew's birthday, though, and I wanted to know what I was giving him after the bookstore ladies suggested it to me.
Now that we've gotten my disclaimer out of the way, I still have a few complaints about the book.
1) It might be old-fashioned of me, but I think that books for kids should include some kind of learning angle. The lessons don't have to be life-shattering, but there should be something there. It can be about socializing or history, morality or science, but there should be something in the stories we give to our children that offer them tools with which to approach the world. This book is about two kid-authors who spend the entire book procrastinating and then (spoilers) at the last minute pull through and finish their project by WRITING ABOUT HOW THEY PROCRASTINATED. And then their books is published and everyone loves it. So I guess the moral of the story is "Hey Kids! You can not do the shit you're supposed to do and you'll still be fine!". Good lesson, Andy Griffiths, good lesson.
2) It's lazy story telling. At the end of the book there are several pages that are just shrunken down images of previous pages because Andy and Terry are "writing the story" and that is the visual representation of them doing so. There is a page full of frames of a single dog saying "bark" over and over again. There are many instances of this and, although I get the comedic value of them, it wound up feeling like Griffiths was trying to reach a certain page count and he did so in the laziest way possible.
3) The book encourages bad behavior. I don't understand why we give kids stuff like this. Again, I understand the comedic effect in having a machine that chases you around shooting marshmallows into your mouth. I understand that it's funny to have a machine that obliterates vegetables. I get that it's funny to describe your best friend as being stupid and annoying, etc. But those things are only funny because we've decided that they're funny and can we please just live in a society where we give up on destructive scripts? Vegetables are just food. People LIKE their friends and (because of this) say nice things about them instead of destructive things.
3) It's about two little white boys getting away with stuff they probably shouldn't get away with. Can we just retire that narrative already? Why not a girl and a boy who are best friends and go on crazy hi-jinks? Kids won't notice the difference and it'll subconsciously do positive things for their worldview.
I'm still giving the book to my nephew because I think he'll like it (and the imaginative element of the book is pretty fun), but I hope his taste develops quickly and in the future I am totally doing better research and finding him a book that isn't so exceptionally mediocre.
Now that we've gotten my disclaimer out of the way, I still have a few complaints about the book.
1) It might be old-fashioned of me, but I think that books for kids should include some kind of learning angle. The lessons don't have to be life-shattering, but there should be something there. It can be about socializing or history, morality or science, but there should be something in the stories we give to our children that offer them tools with which to approach the world. This book is about two kid-authors who spend the entire book procrastinating and then (spoilers) at the last minute pull through and finish their project by WRITING ABOUT HOW THEY PROCRASTINATED. And then their books is published and everyone loves it. So I guess the moral of the story is "Hey Kids! You can not do the shit you're supposed to do and you'll still be fine!". Good lesson, Andy Griffiths, good lesson.
2) It's lazy story telling. At the end of the book there are several pages that are just shrunken down images of previous pages because Andy and Terry are "writing the story" and that is the visual representation of them doing so. There is a page full of frames of a single dog saying "bark" over and over again. There are many instances of this and, although I get the comedic value of them, it wound up feeling like Griffiths was trying to reach a certain page count and he did so in the laziest way possible.
3) The book encourages bad behavior. I don't understand why we give kids stuff like this. Again, I understand the comedic effect in having a machine that chases you around shooting marshmallows into your mouth. I understand that it's funny to have a machine that obliterates vegetables. I get that it's funny to describe your best friend as being stupid and annoying, etc. But those things are only funny because we've decided that they're funny and can we please just live in a society where we give up on destructive scripts? Vegetables are just food. People LIKE their friends and (because of this) say nice things about them instead of destructive things.
3) It's about two little white boys getting away with stuff they probably shouldn't get away with. Can we just retire that narrative already? Why not a girl and a boy who are best friends and go on crazy hi-jinks? Kids won't notice the difference and it'll subconsciously do positive things for their worldview.
I'm still giving the book to my nephew because I think he'll like it (and the imaginative element of the book is pretty fun), but I hope his taste develops quickly and in the future I am totally doing better research and finding him a book that isn't so exceptionally mediocre.