Whoops, overdid it

I came to an exhausted halt yesterday after a trip to the library and the playground and a short visit with friends. I dunno, all I'd done was the laundry and meals and cleaning and tidying (Tuesday is our day for that) and fed the baby and got everyone dressed and out and...

Oh, right.

Anyway, we are also reading a book Linnea has been looking forwards to for ages and ages. Well, I say we are reading it. It's our Five in a Row book, and we read it on Monday, and again on Tuesday.

But we didn't read it today and we only read it once per day anyway.

Because this gloriously yellow an orange book with strong, bold illustrations and amazing use of colour is all about slavery, and specifically about - punchline! - a child born into slavery.

Hoo-rah. We've discussed slavery fairly often over the past few years anyway and it's not an appealing subject. It's a big hairy disappointment to find slavery in this beautiful book, like an enormous caterpillar in a salad. It's like the horrible ostracism in Camille and the Sunflowers where that weirdo Vincent is hounded out of town, in among all the glorious paintings and joyful flowers and zest for life.

If a kiddiewink book is going to depress me, could it please telegraph this ahead of time with drab, miserable colours, perhaps rainfall on the front cover and ominous clouds on the back? Not huge sunsplash and sunflower scatterings? I didn't warn Linnea until last week that her beloved Sun Book wouldn't be happy.

Oh well. The Oxford Reading Tree set may well be the best money I've ever spent on a book, in terms of hours-per-penny. Though the Peter And Jane stuff was really good last year when we were using it. Different times, different things.