A Friend For Dragon

 Last week was the last library visit for my classes at Thursday school. Several of them didn't come, which was fine, and foreseeable - the actual last visit was supposed to be the week before, but since the library had been closed for three out of the last five Thursdays for EQAO (barf) and vaccines (hard to argue with that one), I offered the opportunity for classes who still wanted to come. 

My last class of the day is the grade three class I love, who I always do storytime with. I was sort of thinking we wouldn't do storytime, because I still didn't have much of a voice and the library was hot AF. I put their cards out on the table, and when they came in I told them they could just go pick books. They said "no" as a group, and walked over to the storytime circle and sat down. 

I kind of loved this, obviously, even though my reading glasses were sweating right off my face by the end. I let one of the kids pick the story and it worked out well. This was very stupid of me, since the last time I picked a book without knowing the ending it went horribly wrong.

I love doing storytime, but I get ridiculous anxiety about the book choice. It absolutely HAS to be funny, or at least have funny parts. Middle school kids are not there to have a lesson read to them, and I'm not there to read them a lesson. I agree with Angus's (and Eve's, actually) JK teacher that storybooks should mostly be fun (I had bought her two beautiful but painfully lesson-y storybooks before I heard her say that, so that was embarrassing, but oh well - they were more storybooks for adults anyway). It's great if they mention underwear. People falling down or getting bonked on the head is a plus. There's this great one called Piranhas Don't Eat Bananas, where Brian the piranha keeps trying to get the other piranhas into fruit but they prefer body parts - do they want some plums? What rhymes with plums? You guessed it! That one was a big hit. 

A couple of times I've brought books over from my other schools, if I find a good one while shelving (Ninja Red Riding Hood - great fun). I've even brought in books from my copious home collection, which was large even before I had kids, and only grew after that - we've passed on some of them, but still have a good-sized bunch (Sink or Swim, about cows learning how to swim). But usually I come in and bookdrop the pile of books waiting and while I shelve I walk around the picture book section and just look at books at random. The Cats and Dogs section is good - all the animal ones, actually. Big Feelings and Amazing Me are possibilities - I don't object to the book HAVING a bit of a lesson, as long as it's put across in a funny way. You can never go wrong with a good Elephant and Piggie, but I usually try to find one that not everyone knows already.

So this one day I picked up A Friend for Dragon, by Dav Pilkey, author of the Captain Underpants and Dogman Series among others. For this reason I was pretty confident it would be 'good'. I flipped through the first few pages - okay, dragon is lonely, a few asshole animals don't want to be his friend, he sits under an apple tree, the snake behind a rock talks to him and Dragon thinks it's an apple. Cool, hilarity must ensue! I assumed that in short order, Snake would confess it was really him and Dragon and Snake were at the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

You know what they say about ASSUMing? That's right - librarians who do it are dUMbASSes. Or something. 

So I start reading, while the children are on the floor in front of me looking up with their sweet, expectant faces.

Poor dragon, nobody wants to be his friend. ("That squirrel was RUDE" said one little girl). He's under an apple tree. Snake plays a joke by hiding behind a rock and pretending that he's an apple, and Dragon is all excited that Apple wants to be his friend.

Dragon takes the apple home, while the kids and I wait for Snake to step up and reveal the joke and begin the beautiful friendship.

Huh. Dragon makes dinner for himself and Apple and eats his own dinner, then Apple's dinner when Apple doesn't eat anything. He puts Apple to bed. Any minute, now, Snake....

The next day Apple won't wake up and talk to Dragon, and Dragon is worried and calls the doctor. The children and I are also exchanging concerned looks, as I turn the pages with more and more trepidation.

Dragon takes his friend to the doctor, where a walrus offers to hold Apple for him. I now confess to the kids that I haven't actually read this book all the way through yet, and I don't KNOW what's going to happen next, but surely it's not that...

THE WALRUS EATS DRAGON'S FRIEND APPLE WHAT THE FUCK DAV PILKEY WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO US

We're all convulsed with some mixture of anguish and hilarity at this point, and I'm wondering if I'm going to get called to the principal's office - the book was IN the kids' books section, what the hell. 

Dragon takes the apple core home and buries it, then sits by the grave until an apple tree grows and now he presumably has a tree full of new friends. Who will also not eat or talk and... get eaten by walruses? 

I looked up the book and found it described as a 'warmhearted tale of love and loss', about which I have SOME QUESTIONS. Did you ever read the book Bridge to Terabithia? They made a movie of it and Collette watched it with her kids and when (spoiler alert) the girl dies, Collette confidently told them "it's fine, she'll come back to life". "Oh no!" I said when she told me this "She doesn't come back to life!" "Well I know that NOW, where the hell were you last week?" Collette said.

I guess it's unreasonable to expect the synopsis to explicitly say "READ ALL THE WAY TO END BEFORE EXPOSING CHILDREN". Actually, it's unreasonable to blame the synopsis at all, because I didn't READ any synopsis. Let's be real, this is all on me. Have I learned my lesson? Almost certainly not. I like to live on the edge.