Why I don't Like Chester and the Big Bad Bully

I'm all about children's books that promote kindness and tolerance for everyone and, on the first several readings, I really liked Chester and the Big Bad Bully.  As time went on, though, I began to resent that book and the terrible lesson it taught my child.

Now, anyone who has ever read the book is probably wondering at this point what in the world I am talking about.  This whole series of books about Chester the Raccoon are promoted in schools for their value lessons, so how can I say it taught my child something wrong?  You might be picking up your child's copy right now and looking through the book to find anything amoral in it.  You could do this and you wouldn't find a thing.

That's because the terrible lesson this book taught my child was not amoral or unkind...it was the opposite: a saccharine-sweet, totally unrealistically optimistic lesson that will inevitably lead to pain and misery...

"If you are nice to a bad person, it will make them good"

Daydreaming: Literacy Among the Visually Impaired

I'm a daydreamer.  I like to daydream about futures that will never be and realities far from my own.  Sometimes, I like to daydream about awesome things that could be: