Tonight we will be discussing The Dark by Lemony Snicket, but we will be doing it a little differently from the typical review format. This review comes in the form of a story…
A few days ago Spawn of Scarydad and I found ourselves wandering the aisles of a large bookstore. This particular bookseller also carries toys and games and the children’s section has a table with some little toy trains that Spawn loves to play with.
As she played with the trains I wandered around looking at books until The Dark caught my eye. I sat down on a footstool and began to read.
The plot: Lazlo is afraid of the dark. The Dark lives in the basement for the most part but one night Lazlo’s night light burns out and the Dark comes into his room. This is the story of how Lazlo stops being afraid of the dark.
So, my first impression is that this is an instant classic. It’s simple and elegant and very well constructed. I felt for Lazlo. I really did. And as the story reached its climax, I found myself mentally shouting, “Lazlo, no!! Don’t listen to it!!”
Pretty intense for a children’s book, no?
So then I thought that maybe this is a bit intense for a children’s book. I don’t know. Sometimes she’s scared of nothing at all and other times she’s scared of her own hair. You never can tell with kids. But as I was looking back through the story my little Spawn came over and said, “Is that Daddy’s book?”
“It sure is.”
“I wanna see Daddy’s book.”
“Ok.”
She flipped a few pages, then asked, “Daddy’s book scary?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
She flipped a couple more pages before handing it back to me.
“Yeah, Daddy’s book too scary. I no want it.”
And there you go. I’m still thinking instant classic and will probably pick it up knowing that she’ll love it in the future. But for right now it’s a bit too scary.
You’ve been warned.
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