Sometimes people depress me, they really do.

[conuly]

I had gotten a book for the niecelings, a sweet story about a little girl who wants to be just like her sister. This is so true to their life right now, Evangeline copying Angelique, I knew I had to get it.

And out of two comments on Amazon, one is about "bad grammar".

This book was given to my son as a text book and I had to correct the grammar and incomplete sentences before I could let him read it. The title shoud be "Copy Kyla". The page that starts "Got me some..." should read "I have..." The pages are not numbered. Only two pages are free of grammatical errors. I gave one star for good illustrations and one star for the positive family life and small town atmosphere of the book.

*eyeroll*

Instead of noticing that the little girl talks like, well, a little girl (cheers for accuracy), we get "Gee, nothing matters but the form", missing the point entirely, of course.

I just don't get it, I really don't.

Comments

[conuly]

If it's not, then it's the oh-so-concerned "It portrays black people (or farmers, or immigrants, or whomever it happens to be) as not speaking right and therefore, as being stupid". Nevermind that yes, there are people who really do speak like this and that you're the one who just called them stupid.

Is "Got me purple boots like Kyla" how I speak? Or "I do like Kyla"? No. Far from it. But the kiddos hear worse than this (both in terms of prescriptivist grammar and in terms of things I actually would rather they weren't exposed to) every day on the bus. I'd rather teach them not to judge people so much on presentation, and a little more on message. (So long as the message isn't totally obscured, of course, but really.)