Kid Conspiracy

How I came to be reading the one-star reviews on the charming kids' book The Toothpaste Millionaire, I cannot say. Because I have no idea, and can't think of any series of events that might plausibly have led me there. But there I was, when I ran across this: "With all the choices in children's fiction available, why... would anyone make them read this kind of free-market propaganda? Well, it hits the mark on the 'good-for-you' category: complete with math problems and pithy expressions of 'color-blind' and masculine-feminine friendships... subtle."
This naturally led me to wonder what other vile propaganda might be hiding in your children's "harmless" literature. Luckily, I found these real one-star Amazon reviews, which I present to you as a public service. Let's set the stage with some music.

Green Eggs & Ham

**Spoiler Alert** A local dealer pressures a buyer into ingesting a strange substance for "free". During 80% of the book, the protagonist clearly says "No", but the substance dealer continues to pressure. In the end the protagonist is defeated, ingests the substance, and shows signs of addiction proclaiming outrageous ways in which he'll take this new substance. There is no evidence that the antagonist will continue to provide free samples of the substance once the main character is addicted.

And here I thought this book's only agenda was to get children to eat rotten meat.  

Harriet the Spy
Jesus Wept
(yes, this is the actual title of the review)

This book is devoid of all morals. I encourage all parents to encourage your children to read really good children's literature, the BIBLE and forgo this trash... I especially abhor the part when Harriet hangs the fetal pig in the school's stairwell. I homeschool all of our 7 children, and I read everything that I assign them to read. I couln't get past the first chapter of this book before I was ready to throw up in disgust.

Oh my holy god, at no point in this book does anyone hang a fetal pig anywhere. What the holy hell book was this lady even reading?? (also, do you get the feeling this lady mentions her 7 home schooled children and their love of the bible in every conversation she has ever?)

I Will Love You Forever

This story is pretty much akin to what I imagine a convicted pedophile would come up with if they actually let one publish a children's book. The supposed "intention" of the book (and believe me, I have my doubts as to the REAL intention behind this story) does little to sweeten the seriously unsettling undertone here. It reads way too much like a sugar-coated story of incest.

That's certainly one interpretation... 

Where the Wild Things Are

A disturbed young man in a devilish costume chases a dog with a sharp object, then threatens to cannibalize his mother when she objects. No, it's not an episode of "True Blood"... Max watches as the monsters "gnash their terrible teeth" (a descriptor Jesus used in the Bible when describing Hell)...

And people tell me I read too much into everything. 
Funny thing while digging through these reviews, they start to kind of make sense after a while. Like, I get that Green Eggs & Ham is supposed to be about how it doesn't have to be scary to try new things, but Sam is kind of a pusher. And a lot of parents accurately point out that Harriet writes really, really mean stuff about her friends. Plus, now that he mentions it, those weird vampire sex scenes in Where the Wild Things Are DO seem kind of inappropriate.