Banned

Today was "Dress as Your Favorite Storybook Character Day" at school, and although we had hashed out different ideas for the last few days, neither I nor the boys could come to any agreement. My only stipulation was that the costumes had to be simple and require no sewing. (For some reason the boys are under the impression that I can construct a costume from scratch overnight!) I had checked out about 40 library books to get ideas, and still we couldn't figure anything out.

Well, I was so busy yesterday that dress up day completely slipped my mind, only to resurface at 6:55 this morning. Yikes, what to do? I had Shel Silverstein in the back of my mind because he comes up with some crazy characters (visible in his outrageous drawings,) so I grabbed a copy of A Light in the Attic and flipped through it. A few pages in, and a light bulb went off in my head!

There is a great poem called Spelling Bee, and it goes like this:

I got stung by a bee
I won't tell you where.
I got stung by a bee
I was just lyin' there,
And it tattooed a message
I can't let you see
That spells out
Hello... you've been stung by a bee.

In the book, the line, "Hello, you've been stung by a bee," is spelled out in bee stings on a characters (tactfully drawn) naked rear. Well, I couldn't do that, but I got out Riley's toy tattoo gun and tattooed this line on all three boys' forearms in perfect pointillistic dots. The boys were thrilled, even more so after I sent them to school with their own photocopy of the poem (thanks for knocking that out this morning, Heather,) so they could show their classes where the character originated.

After putting them all on the bus, I came in to post about it on my blog, and figured you'd get a better feel for the poem if I could copy the poem with the picture. So I type into my Google bar, "Shel Silverstein spelling bee poem," and all sorts of things popped up. And everything that popped up included the word banned. Uh oh...

Turns out the book A Light in the Attic is one of the ten most frequently banned children's books of all time! (My teachers in elementary school, nor my local library, must have been aware of this fact!) Hmm... why would people want to ban this book you ask? Two reasons, one of which is the drawing connected to the poem in question. The very drawing that I sent my children off to school with this morning to show their classmates.

Oops.

Needless to say, Corey read his poem to his class and showed them all the picture, and I've heard no complaints. Shannon's teacher read the poem to the class and showed the picture, and as Shannon said, "Everybody laughed about his butt with the words on it!" Once again, no complaints. Riley didn't bother taking the poem out of his backpack, so once again, no complaints.

I am so relieved. Pheeeww! I'd hate to have to explain to the principal or angry parents just what I, (the PTO secretary, none the less,) was thinking when I sent in a poem complete with a picture of a naked butt.