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Home » Parenting

The Cat in the [REDACTED] Comes Back

Friday, 15 September 2006 Comments »

Ah, memories. My mom saved lots of books from when I was a kid, and the boys love to read them. Needless to say, they have become a little 'worn.' For example, "Green Eggs and Ham" is in 3 pieces, only 2 of which are locatable at any one time.

gunsRfun.jpg

So the other day I decided to grab new copies of some Dr. Seuss books at Amazon. Innocently, I chose The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. I didn't have my childhood copy, but I thought the boys would enjoy a sequel. Well, like so many others, this sequel is not as good as the original.

redactory.jpg

I'm happily reading along when I come to the part where Cat A, B and their friends use GUNS to KILL some dirty snow! Am I a complete freak, or is this insane to have in a kids book? It never occured to me to "pre-read" a Dr. Seuss book, but I've learned my lesson.

catA.jpgYes, it was a good conversation starter for us. The boys already know how I feel about guns. We'll be in Target and they'll see an action figure with guns, and they'll say "We don't want that at our house because it has guns!"

But of course, that is just the voice outside their head. On the inside they're saying "OMFG I WANT A BATMAN WITH PISTOLS!!!! AND A RIFLE!!! AND HEY, IS THAT A STICK OVER THERE?"

To me it doesn't matter that they are "just" pop-guns. I give a thumbs-down to violence, even when sanitized by cartoonery. But other than the guns (Mrs. Lincoln) the book isn't too bad. So here is my Guide to De-Gunning Your Copy of "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back"

Fortunately, Dr. Seuss was nice enough to make it very easy to slice out the pages with guns on them. There are 3 pages in the middle that can be Exacto-ed out neatly and with no one the wiser. If you've plucked out the right pages, this is what you'll see:

after.jpg

Then you'll just need to make some editorial changes to this page:

notdone.jpg

I used whiteout and changed "kill" to "get" myself. But hey, be creative, get out that Thesaurus! And have a great weekend. Think of me on Sunday… I'll be 39! O.M.G.

  • Oh, The Joys said:

    Fellow 39 year old Virgo with a birthday TWO DAYS after mine…let us UNITE in our Virgo-ness!!! Happy Birthday!!

    15 September 2006 at 12:18 pm
  • andria said:

    I'll be 38 next week, glad to hear someone is a year older than me especially after listening to women drone on and on about how old they are this morning….a shocking 27!!! Gee, can't even remember where I was that year.

    I share your thoughts on guns. We have avoided the gun issue here, so far, but after school started he was bombarded with gun talk. I am sure he does it at school, but he knows better here.

    Happy Birthday.

    15 September 2006 at 1:06 pm
  • Kris said:

    That's crazy with the Seuss book-who would have thought that?

    16 September 2006 at 7:51 pm
  • mbbored said:

    This post made me laugh out loud. You see, my mother did the same thing to all our books when we were children: no guns, no killing. Most of our videos were recorded off tv (my dad was a technology nerd and we had vcrs way before anybody else we knew) and my mother editted out anything bad. I was a teenager before I realized that Bambi's mother died and that there were flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. Now my sister is having kids, and we crack up at least once a week when we rediscover a childhood favorite book that clearly has been altered. Who knew that Mr. McGregor was so mean to Peter Rabbit? We sure didn't. Of course, she couldn't shield us completely: we carved guns out of bars of soap, used tooth picks to make our Barbies sword fight (boys and girls alike). And now my 4 year old nephew uses his lovely gender neutral baby doll as a hammer.

    9 October 2006 at 8:35 am
  • Plain Jane Mom said:

    Hey mbbored, my kids make swords from sticks. They shoot each other with hotwheels cars too. I just figure that they'll do that stuff anyway, BUT they need to know how I feel about it.

    By the way, don't watch Old Yeller. You'll end up like Phoebe on "Friends"… :)

    9 October 2006 at 9:12 am

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