How Fifty Shades of Grey made it into our library.

It's been a while so I'll probably need to confirm some history with the internets, but the first I'd heard of Shades I'll call it, was when a library patron called to request that we get a copy for her/him (don't remember whether it was a him or her).

I did a quick compooter search and did not see any reference to the book. At all. I saw some fanfic references and comments, but I did not find any published novel with that title. (As you read this post, you'll learn that there existed a 50Shades.com website and a print-on-demand book; not sure if I found the site and ignored it or just never saw it. I wasn't keeping notes, not even mental ones.)

Then about a week later, maybe more or less, a request came for an inter-library loan for Shades and I answered how we were unable to get it because it wasn't currently available to us.


I think I remember a coworker asking if I'd heard of Shades because she'd just received a request for it and I commented that there is no book we can buy: "this is some online porn that everyone suddenly thinks is a book." (Again, a book had existed for several months as print-on-demand. So there was a book. Being print-on-demand just means there aren't copies in stores for anyone to pick up and pay for, even libraries.)

How were so many people learning about this book in December 2011? I want whoever was in charge of that marketing campaign to work for the library.

The library often gets requests for self-published books. These are books we won't (except in rare instances) buy for the collection. The reasoning for this is often the high cost and low demand. There are also purchasing issues because those books aren't available from our usual vendor. So getting those books means arranging a one-time payment with a small press or even an individual person then paying for shipping and separate processing, all things that our usual vendors provide because of the high volume of our orders. FYI, many libraries have procedures for accepting self-published books if there is some perceived demand. Before Shades was published, public demand for self-published books at our library was uncommon and so we had no real plan to purchase them. It was very very rare that we did.

When the third or fourth request came in and I checked online for it, suddenly there was a book for sale on Amazon. I think it was $40. And it looked like it was from a vanity press and I think the publisher was in Australia (this was the same print-on-demand title mentioned before). But it was Amazon and that made it available. So at this point there was a book. But it wasn't from a vendor where we had any relationship with and it was $40. The odds the library would be able to get it was still at a realistic 1,000 to 1.

But the book beat those odds. Because we learned we had thousands of patrons who wanted to read it.

We were able to order a few copies even though we have no formal purchasing agreement with Amazon. Mainly because of the outrageous demand for it. People requested it at every branch. I have an email that shows how many requests we had before the book was ever published in the USA as a paperback. As soon as we were able to order from Amazon and added the information in our catalog that the book was on order, we had over 1,000 library card holders request a hold for it.

I wish I could go back to the end of 2011 to see the progress of the online demand for it: I mean, was it popular on Facebook or just through people emailing each other about it? I don't know. But it seemed like it was only a few months between that first request and the arrival of the juggernaut.

According to "The Lost History of Fifty Shades of Grey"

"This erotica bestseller began as a work of Twilight fan fiction called Master of the Universe, earning a massive fan fiction following years before the book deal. Most traces of this fan fiction history have been removed from the Internet."

Now if you remember that Shades was originally posted as Twilight fan fiction, and that the Twilight series had just been a super-massive publishing monster, then the number of people reading the original posting of Shades on the internet could have been in the tens or hundreds of thousands or readers. Given the explosive demand for Shades while it was originally only available as that $40 paper edition on Amazon, the readership of Twilight fanfic must have been tremendous.

I remember having those thoughts when I was researching the book online. How the hell do people find out about this stuff?

But another issue goes back to the people who requested the book before it was even a mass published book for sale. Who are these people? The knee-jerk people who call the library and request something that doesn't exist (as I said before, it existed. I'm making this statement as if I'm remembering from February 2012). Because they were calling in 2011. If you know about the history of Shades, then you know it lived online in 2010, so that whole year could have produced that fan base. So what may have seemed as sudden and knee-jerk behavior to me could just have been a year's worth of sexual frustration.

I see from the Adweek article (previous link) Shades was available from The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House back in June 2011, and this would have been at least 5 months before I'd gotten my first request for it. So call me a bad librarian for now knowing about this book in December 2011. But as it wasn't showing in the holdings of any library that I could see and that it wasn't even on Amazon at that time, it was invisible to me. Maybe if I'd been a fan of Twilight, I'd have known.

By March 2012, the monster was here. And we had lots of copies. If you have any memory of Shades from 2010 or 2011 or even pre-March 2012, maybe you can share what your library did in those early months before the storm. Or even how you decided to buy or not buy it for your library. Any story is worth preserving.

So remember that when you're getting turned on by the BDSM shenanigans between Christian and Anastasia, you're really looking at the relationship between a 200-year-old vampire and the 16-year-old girl he wants to sleep with.

YOUR TIME IS UP

You are born. And some time after, you will die.

You can argue whether you are born when you exit your mother or whether you achieve a sense of understanding before that or even much before that, that you are part of some universal consciousness that exists outside of space and time and that birth and death are simply small blips on your eternal journey. But after you are done being high, you will still die. And so you fear death because almost no one dies when it's convenient.

I had to think about that because I saw an image where someone had sprayed a wall with these words: "time does not exist. clocks exist."

This is one of those naive beliefs held by teens and possibly anarchists. No, not anarchists because they have meetings. But teens, definitely.

TIME is REAL.

In our universe. Time may exist differently or not at all someplace else, but it works here. And a clock is just a tool to measure it. Time exists because the Earth turns and the Sun appears and then relative to our position on Earth, moves elsewhere. Seconds and minutes may seem arbitrary when observed out of context, but the long view of a clock is that it reverse-engineers the day into somewhat equal parts. The event is planetary movement and the clock measures a small part of the cycle in a way that makes us always late for something.

TIME is MONEY.

Time is truly the only commodity where there is no standard of value. Love, you say? No. We know what love is worth. We've been told by experts. An engagement rings costs three months salary. You sleep with him on the third date. You buy her a nice dinner and get to spend the night. A lap dance costs around $40 for a 4-minute song. We know these things. And if you don't, you should. Lap dance: $40. The bouncer isn't happy if you can't find the other twenty.

So we know what love costs: love is free.

But Time is a mess to calculate. We attempt to measure it, but what we are really trying to measure is the space between events. That's why Time drags during meetings but flies when you're having fun: time is a measurement of space between events throughout existence.

So time is not arbitrary. Time exists. The day comes, then night. Seasons change. We age. We pay taxes. Anyone who denies the existence of time is someone with really old food in his refrigerator. Don't drink the milk. Don't even sniff it.

But Time is directly related to money. Anything that has value, gains or loses it over time. Books. You know that a new book is heavily discounted in order to increase sales and get the author on the Bestseller List. Then that 40% discount evaporates to 15% once the book is a hit. Until the market becomes saturated and the publisher remainders get marked down to $6.98. But if the book goes out of print and the author sleeps with the president, then all the available copies shoot back up to $100. Without Time, none of this could happen in any observable, enjoyable way.

Time seems even more arbitrary at the Library. Due dates vary by material. Or by demand. This book can be borrowed for 14 days, while this one can be yours indefinitely. That movie is due back next week, but that box set of Game of Thrones can be yours for 14 days. 

But at least the library puts stickers on everything so you know.

Boobs for Books.

Have you heard? April 12 is the first Boobs for Books event.

What? What’s Boobs for Books?
It’s a fundraising event in support of Books for Teens which focuses on raising money to get books into the hands of needy young adults. Or boobs into the hands of nerdy young adults. Whatever.

How do you get involved?
The idea is that people around the country, and maybe around the world, will sponsor a Boobs for Books fundraising event on April 12. Do you have boobs? Do you know someone with boobs? Then you can help!

Boobs come in all shapes and sizes. You might have a boob discussion group that night and ask those who attend to donate an amount of their choice to Books for Teens. Who doesn't want to talk about boobs? Celebrity boobs, whether someone has real or fake boobs, the discussion is endless. Or, you might have a happy hour at your home and raffle off a prize to attendees who flash a little skin. You could host something at a local bar or restaurant and raise funds via an uncover charge. Or, you could have a progressive party and at each participating location have a boob auction. The more boobs, the more books. We don't care how your boobs get books, but boobs have a way of making some people give up their hard-earned money and we want to take that money to buy books.

And speaking of Boobs for Books cocktails, and not Cocks for Books which is our May 9 event, why not create boob themed cocktails for your Boobs for Books event? For example, a Slippery Nipple is 1/2 oz Irish cream, 1/2 oz butterscotch schnapps.

We've got a Pinterest Board ready for your photos and recipes. Snap a picture of your specially created cocktail near your boobs and post it on the Board. Or, grab an image of the uncovered boob that inspired your recipe and post that along with the recipe. Maybe your boob-themed cocktail will be tested and tasted by those in another part of the country. Boob-tasting is one of the quickest ways to raise money for books.

Over the next several weeks you’ll hear more about Boobs for Books here on the blog, on the Books for Teens Faceboob, um, Facebook page, and on other social media outlets. Talk with your friends and colleagues about the event and get started planning what you are going to do. You don’t want to miss the first, and last, ever Boobs for Books. Because we know someone's going to jail for this.

this is fake page, but almost all of it was stolen, word for word, but with many added letter 'B's from the real page which is here, http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2012/02/09/booze-for-books-dont-miss-it/

The Flavor of our Books.

Publishers and authors know that romance novels and ice cream go together. They know that Shakespeare goes better with Camembert and Faulkner is smoother with rye whiskey. Mike Mignola's Hellboy comes alive with a Baby Ruth, and Mickey Spillane and Anne Rice beg for the taste of fresh blood in your mouth.

I asked recently on Twitter about things that became more valuable when licked, and now I can say that books can be added to that very short list as several new authors have published books where the ink and paper has flavor.

Jolene Campbell's Beaver on Mars uses this new technology to add apples, pine, chalk and other flavors to her novel. "Nothing else conveys the mood like taste," she says, licking the page of a frantic chase scene that fills her taste buds with cinnamon.

James Frey's new book, A Million Plus One tastes like shit, actual human feces. When asked which technology he used to get the paper to taste that way, he replied, "I didn't do anything special. My books just taste like shit naturally."

Many publishers are adding this technology to their recent releases, but trends suggest that readers are looking for even more direct ways to incorporate more sensory participation into the reading experience.

One major publisher is said to be working on a device that will, at a predetermined point in the story, either terrifying or suspenseful, will actually slam shut on the reader's tit.

"But we're still in the testing phase," the unnamed source stated.


-- idea stolen from "The Soundtrack of Our Books."

This Shit Used to be True.

I want to talk about Awful Library Books. Not so much the web site because I don't really know what they do there, but I want to call out all the librarians who feel superior for identifying some pathetic old outdated book and marching it out for its public shame.

And this is the entry that sparked my ire:

Let’s Be Indians
Parish 1962

This book is still in reasonable shape given its age, although it probably hasn't been touched since I snagged it for this website. Maybe it slipped through the cracks on weeding since the call number on the spine was wrong. (Weak excuse, but I will put it out there as a possibility.) Yes, I did find it in an active public library youth collection. World Cat shows an embarrassingly large group of public libraries and school libraries holding this title. This book is so light on concrete information, they don’t even list distinctions among the native people. They are all just Indians. Time to retire this title, and for the love of God, how about some updated materials on native cultures rather than a marginal craft book?

Hey, this was us. I bet that before this book, most kids didn't want to be the Indian. Back in the 1950's, the weakest kid that no one liked had to be the Indian whenever you played Cowboys and Indians. The Indian was reviled as a sneaky thief and murderer who came in the night and captured our women. So I'm betting that in 1962, this was considered a progressive view of Indians as creative and brave and worthy of being the lead choice in a young boy's or girl's role playing.

We can all laugh and say, "Oh, I would never have bought that for my library." And I would jump into my time machine to locate which books are "awful" fifty years from now and come back and say, "Yes, you would. Here are the ones you're buying now that EVERYONE in the future is laughing at."

Ok, you're right, I'm kidding. I wouldn't do that because there are no libraries fifty years from now. That's just silly. Also, I only use my time machine to:

a. Kill Hitler over and over.
b. invest in something that I can sell for much more money now.
c. fuck hot cave chicks in One Million B. C.

Oh, yeah, we're offended now by the ignorance expressed between those sad covers of all those old books, but we used to believe what is in these books that we now toss out from our libraries.

Suddenly, we're all so enlightened. But the point is that we bought that book because it represented ideas that our society valued, ONCE UPON A TIME. At some point in our past, some person took the time to write a book that made its way to a publisher who thought it might sell a few copies so it was printed and put out for sale and listed in some catalog or even given a favorable review in a professional library publication and some librarian read about it and ordered it and catalogued it and put it on the shelf for all of us to read and take home. And we read it and agreed with it BECAUSE IT WAS THE TRUTH.

Maybe it was some long ago librarian who bought that book that seems so wrong now. Or maybe it was you. If it was you, are you admitting now that you bought a shitty book? No. At the time, it was probably a good idea to get it. It filled a need.

Or did you succumb to peer pressure when you made that decision to add that book to the collection? If so, you suck. Suck. Suck. Suck. You sucky librarian. Or maybe your boss made you do it.

Or maybe your patrons requested it. They don't really know any better; they only do what TV and now the Internet tells them to do. "Buy this money, health, relationship book and all your problems will go away." And because they're too cheap to buy it for themselves, they get the librarian to buy it. Even though you knew it was a shitty book, you bought it anyway. Because these idiots pay your salary.

But that's the problem with serving the public: they are stupid. If enough people ask for something that might present extremely dangerous health advice or risky investments or even idiotic ideals, books that are a complete waste of paper, you'd probably have to buy it. Because it's what your patrons want. And even though the book is wrong, that doesn't make it any less TRUE. It's true that your patrons were gullible enough to force you to waste tax money on shit. I bet I could publish Barefoot and Pregnant: why women should quit the workforce in these troubled times and give the jobs back to MEN right now and promote it on TV and the radio and the Internet and make it so popular that your library would buy it.

And it would circulate 500 times.

Does that make it a good book? Apparently, by library circulation standards, since we really only care about what gets checked out. But it's a shitty book that no one should be reading, but yet everyone did.

But how much crap are you collecting now that will embarrass or enrage future generations? What if some future water shortage has us drinking our urine? And all those books on mixing frozen daiquiris or swimming pool maintenance or lawn care are viewed with the same derision we now foist upon our own obsolete cultural and ecological views.

The point is, we can't know about all the stuff that we think is awesome now that might get shoved back in our faces later.

So my point is, we shouldn't weed these books.

I think librarians should keep these books and place them in a display called, Past Facts, or Local Time Machine, or Mirror Mirrors. There should be a whole Dewey number to represent these awful books.

No one says we need to be proud of them. But I think it's helpful for society to look back at where we've been and decide whether we're making progress.

But to answer your thought balloon: YES. Weed old medical books. There's no reason to kill people just so we can collectively mock useless therapies. It would be funny to do it, but still wrong.

"Don't Read Shakespeare on the Shitter."

Don't ask why, but I found a bunch of stories on how unsanitary it is to read while you're on the toilet. In fact, an image search for "reading on the toilet" can fill your morning with delightful visions of women and men and animals all enjoying a little light reading while voiding their bodies of waste matter. Dee-light-ful.

The good news is, reading a printed paperback or hardback book while you pinch a loaf isn't going to kill anyone and could possibly make you a better person. A disgusting, filthy, better person.

According to the Guardian, contemplating the Meaning of Life while dropping a deuce is an enviable position in which to find oneself and that others should aspire towards, noting that, "the toilet of the middle ages, high up in a castle turret, offered the perfect solitude for "uninterrupted reading"; Lord Chesterfield too saluted the benefits, recounting the tale of a man who used his time wisely in the "necessary house" to work his way through Horace."

And we know how sanitary the Middle Ages were. But I think those old dudes were simply masturbating. They'd take a book to pretend they were reading, but they were really just diddling themselves. "How was your Horace? Wink, wink."

The danger, they add, is, "your poo can get on your hands, [and] be transferred to your reading material." Ah, public libraries: Aiding poo migration since 1600.

"Microbes don't fare too well on absorbent surfaces, and might survive only minutes on newspaper. But plastic book covers and those shiny, smooth surfaces of Kindles, iPhones and iPads are more accommodating, and it's likely bugs can live on those for hours. A recent study by Curtis suggests that in Britain one in six mobile phones is contaminated with faecal matter, largely because people fail to wash their hands after going to the toilet."

So the conclusion, the disgusting conclusion, is that reading while on the toilet is a widespread practice, which is mostly harmless so long as you view spreading feces on the objects you touch as mostly harmless.

Personally, I don't read "whilst" (the King's English) upon the "crapper" (the Earl's English). I don't tweet or play Angry Birds or do anything else with my hands. Except floss. And knit. And write checks. And compose commercial jingles on my Casio keyboard. And blog. Because I'm on the toilet now.

And The Mouthy Housewives, when asked by a mom if her son's new toilet reading habit is gross, reply, "WHO THE HELL CARES WHERE YOUR SON READS AS LONG AS HE’S READING!?!?"

Point taken. Reading trumps poo hands.

But getting back to "those shiny, smooth surfaces of Kindles, iPhones and iPads" where germs can live "for hours"... [GAG!!!!!!!!]

Someone has got to start a campaign against the reading of Kindles and iPads while on the toilet. This is fucking gross. It's like when I hear a cell phone conversation coming from the stall in a public restroom and all I can think is that the is no level of cleanliness that exists in that tiny space that allows for zero transfer of crap to every surface including the dude's face. Hand. Ass. Hand. Phone. Ear. Cheek. Mouth. I don't care if your shit came out in a neatly wrapped gift box with a bow: you're dipping you hand into the no-fly zone of the toilet. There's a perimeter level with the seat that should not be broken with the same hand you're using to hold your toothbrush.

So let's get this started now. Here is the "Don't READ" campaign. And yes, these are terrible slogans. You try coming up with authors whose names rhyme with "toilet" or "crapper" or "shit." How about, "Don't leave a turd, holding the written word"?

"Don't READ Shakespeare on the Shitter."
"Don't READ Tolstoy on the Toidy."
"Put Down That Gertrude Stein Before You Wipe Your Behind."
"Don't Wipe Your Ass While Reading 'Leaves of Grass.'"
"Don't READ Stephen King on The Throne."

You don't want to hear what I came up with for Honoré de Balzac.

Or maybe these should just be simple posters of celebrities sitting on the toilet under the banner, DON'T READ.

Or,
"The hand that swipes is not the hand that wipes."
"Leave your ebook in the hall, when you answer Nature's Call."

And the worst one of all,

The Light and Dark of Lit

I was totally confused by the outrage I read expressed last week at the Wall Street Journal article on young adult literature. So much anger expressed toward the author. You would think these people were influenced by the all the darkness in teen fiction.

But this is what I took away from the article: "The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship."

I am not a parent. I was one, but I traded my children a long time ago to a witch who lived in the woods for the power to give David Caruso his comeback. I admit it was a stupid thing, but man, I really thought he deserved another chance. Ironically, I've never seen even one episode of CSI Miami. Is it any good?

I am not a parent. That's not my job. But the librarian's job, my job, is to support the freedom to read.

So my job is not to be a parent. My job is to buy quality books. And if not quality books, popular books that may or may not be of any great quality.

Librarians are continually stating that it's the parents' responsibility to monitor what their children read. But how can parents make these judgments if they get criticized for making these critical decisions? Even the recent NPR article criticizes parents who keep kids from reading what they want, "Banning is banning, not guidance, and if the suggestion is that that's the parenting role, it has to be done ... regretfully, I think. Even for parents acting with regard to their own kids, the act of one human being actually preventing another human being from reading a book is a grave decision." Even though the next sentence says, "Obviously, not everything is appropriate for every audience..."

So if something isn't appropriate, how is the parent supposed to direct the teen toward something else without seeming like a monster?

But this isn't my battle. I still feel that this is an area for parents only. I would never criticize a parent for judging a YA book as inappropriate for her child. It is only my job to find books which ARE appropriate for my patrons.

But for these parents who want to keep their kids from reading literature that's too dark, maybe they can find a way to do it while avoiding any of the intellectual freedom "black list" terms:
Don't say you won't let your teen read the book because it has too many vampires, zombies or werewolves; say it's not vegan friendly.

My job is to help people find something to read. And if your library has teen reading lists for "dark" books but can't offer a parent a similar list for books that don't dwell in the darkness, then I'd say you need to work on that part of your job because there's one patron your library isn't helping.

The Book vs. Us

On the one hand, there is the book. And on the other, there is us. I might say it's a form of Nurture vs. Nature where Nurture is the unchangeable WORD, printed and bound and Nature is the EXPERIENCES we have, separate from the word but reliant on it for some meaning or understanding (but that would go against all previous definitions of nature-nurture).

We have this immovable thing, this book, with inked sheets of paper where letters are frozen in time and space, where ideas move in a line from beginning to end without any detours.

And then we have this other thing, this fluid, fluctuating thing that is dynamic and conscious and free.

We have language and art to express ourselves. We form thoughts and we attempt to convey those ideas to others.

There are always these opposing forces: we want to live, but we also want to record what was lived. We have life. But we also want to share life with others:
"Do that thing you did before."
"What thing? This?"
"No, it was different."

We are always attempting to recapture and relive special moments. We take photos. We blog; we tweet. We paint cave walls. We get tattooed. We need to express what life means to us, as humans.

Or so it seems. We could be like animals. Even though I don't know what it's like to be an animal, my guess is that birds don't ask other birds what they think of their nests or dogs don't compliment each other's coats.

But each wall or blog post or tweet is a reduction of that freedom. Each wav and avi posted is also only a tiny fraction of our Nature.

What we live; what we observe; what we remember; what we share, are all smaller and smaller subsets of the whole of our Nature.

We live. But when we need to express how we live, we create books, songs, art, games, video.

We live this duality, but often misunderstand it. These parts need each other. But each time we neglect the one side, the other side rebels. Reflect on your life too much and you may forget to live it. Live too much without any reflection and you may seem crazy.

But there's no point in trying to find a balance. Each side needs to be fulfilled. Live. Record. Live. Record. Time moves forward and we can't do both at the same time. You can pretend that you can observe your life as you live it, but you are inevitably Schrödinger's Cat: just the act of looking alters how you live. Unless you're a true narcissist, then looking is all that matters.

So Live. Then Look. Or Look, then Live; it's your choice.

And if what you see is worth mentioning, do your best to tell others. Or just make it up and dare someone to call you a liar.

WTF is this?

What would I think of a book when I grow up in a world where all reading is done on an electronic device? I'm trying to imagine how I might perceive the book if I've never experienced one, if every book I ever read was on a dedicated reader or a tablet or other device. I mean, I would be able to read. I'd know what words are, but I've just never seen a story printed on paper and bound into a book.

(I think it might go a little something like this...)

I tap the cover of The Grouchy Ladybug, but nothing happens. Tap. Tap. Tap. Poke. Poke. Poke Poke PokePokePokePokePoke. I pinch and spread, pinch and spread. The ladybug doesn't talk or move or offer me a discount coupon for Doritos or say my name. The colors are bright, but I like my screen brighter. But I don't see any settings to change to increase the brightness. The picture throws off some glare and isn't as easy to read as my reader with the latest electronic ink firmware.

The text on the back doesn't resize not matter what I try. I slide my finger across the front over and over and over, but the picture never advances to a new screen. This sucks.

I pull open the front board and tear the thin covering and it goes "Shhhrrrrtt" as it rips. The covering has the same picture on it as the hard board underneath. What the hell is that about?

I finally get the board up by lifting it. It's hinged and it swings open like door which is pretty simple.

Now the sliding works. I can slide across a picture to advance the screen. But there's no control and I seem to jump ahead too far. Did you ever play Poker? With real cards like in Las Vegas? That's what you have to do to get these things to move. Like fanning a deck of cards, you have to use your index finger and thumb to separate the sheets to move them one at a time.

Again, nothing works. No tapping, spreading, swiping.

And holy crap! What is this? There are sheets that aren't even the same size. The sheets get bigger and bigger in sequence and they have tiny analog clocks up on top like that retro clock app that everyone has. There is stuff on both sides of the sheets. Some full-colored artwork on one side and text on the other.

And as I advance the pages, the text is now getting really big. How the hell did that happen? There's a picture of an elephant and the text is really big, and then next to a picture of a whale, the text is really, really huge. Like the text adjusts itself to match the art. That seems really cool. I wonder how they did that.

Okay, I finally figured this out. Flip. Flip. Forward. Reverse. The pages change as fast as I can flip with no lag between images. I'm not sure what the processor is, but it's fast.

This thing's pretty interesting, but I don't see any way to turn it off. It will probably turn itself off when the battery gets low.

Missing pages

It's widely known that authors have their works edited prior to publication. But I was a little surprised to discover that this has even happened to authors of childrens books.


The Empty Pot by Demi is one such book. This is a charming story about a boy named Ping who discovers the power of honesty.


But in the published version of the book, the other children lie, but are never punished for their wrongs. That's because the page with that part of the story was deleted prior to publication.


But here now, for the first time, is that missing page, that I totally made up. And isn't real. And doesn't violate any copyrights because it is a parody.