The Mrs: The Bookshelf

Bad kids books are out there, sitting innocently on the library or bookstore shelf, waiting for you to take them home without reading them - maybe without even opening them. Only when you get them home and have your children finally snuggled in beside you will they unleash their badness on you - the books, not the children. Mostly.

This lurking book badness takes many forms. It can be the Smarmy Preciousness, the Commercially Cute, the Horrifyingly Incomprehensible, the Classically Mediocre. You shouldn't have to suffer through them, unless they're bad enough to be entertaining. You certainly shouldn't have to cough up money for them.

Let me save you some time. And since it's such a treat to find a rare good book in the trash that is contemporary children's literature, I'll even throw in a few good ones too.

For my sanity. And the sanity of my children. Because I don't want to scar them...or scare them.

Leave it on the shelf. Leave it!