Fart-unate Son (or Daughter)
Published June 07, 2003
Just scanning down the NY Times bestseller lists. On the children's list I was surprised that Dr. Suess is at No. 1 with the 1990 book, "Oh, the Places You'll Go", Theodore G. is dead but he's that good and has been on the list 250 weeks. (He's also G. because I don't want to look up the name. I can pronounce it but not spell it).
Guess it always seems right when he's at or near the top. He's got that playful sense of, well, everything.
I thought all that in a flash and then I came to the No. 4 on the list and shook my head in disgust. The book "Walter The Farting Dog" by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray sits like a log there. (Oh, the places he'll go.) Who's buying that book for their children? Farts? Yeah, admittedly, funny some of the time, but basing a kids' book on it? I can't believe there's any type of moral lesson to get out of flatulence. Is the word "fart" that funny?
Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart. Fart.
Or does the book have embedded sound and olfactory chips like those musical greeting cards? What a multimedia experience — viva la technologie!
Has anybody bought this travesty for their kid? Let me rephrase that, since obviously people have bought it. Has anybody reading this bought it for their kids? And why?
One Amazon reader from "Plam Springs" says: If you do story reading to yound [sic] children at schools, this would be a fun book.
Boy, schools are bad aren't they? Somebody wasn't reading this pantload of a book to me because I still love books.
It's the equivelant of a talentless comedian trying to get cheap laughs through machine gunning "shits" "fucks" and "motherfuckers" all over the stage.
Please look out for Sammy the Diarrhetic Dolphin and Vinnie the Vomiting Chihuahua at a store near you. Your kid's new menagerie of childhood memories. All together now ... aaaaaaaaaaah thfthfthfthft.
Excuse me.
Other books by Kotzwinkle:
-- Potty Trouble in Bugland
-- The Bear Shit On the Mountain
-- The Fatal Man
-- Doctor Rabies
-- Jack Off in the Box
-- The Midnight Rectal Examiner
-- The Hairy-Testicular Storybook
-- That's Some Crazy Shit, the Return
By the way, the Dr. Suess book comes in a pop-up edition. I'm sure glad that the other one ... well, you know where I'm "going" with this.
- Fart-unate Son (or Daughter)
- Published: June 07, 2003
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Books
- Writer: Temple Stark
- Temple Stark's BC Writer page
- Temple Stark's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
Dr. Seuss = Theodor (no e) Seuss Geisel.
Fart makes them meadow kids laugh, I guess.
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Kotzwinkle is actually a highly regarded and eccentric writer of intellecutal speculative fiction. His book The Fan Man is a secret classic, and his more recent novel Fata Morgana has been incredibly favorably received and compared to the work of Borges.
But yes, he also started writing quirky childrens books late in his career and has been enormously successful with the Walter the Farting Dog series, which includes a number of other books which have Walter farting in different situations, and has been translated into many different languages including Latin.
Dave