So, remember the woman who bitched at me over on Amazon?

I dared to suggest that maybe - just maybe - if 31% of the US population is non-white that it might be a great idea if picture books (especially alphabet books which have 26 or more separate people in them!) reflect that? Let's see... 1/3 of 26 is... um... about 8 people. In your average alphabet book, assuming one person per letter and that there are no repeats of people, there should be 8 people who are not white. More or less.

Anyway, upon further inspection it seems she's just hypersensitive to criticism of this particular author's books, not to me or anything. (That's a disappointing relief. Yes, the phrase makes sense.)

Here's my review.

( Read more... )

And here is another review of the same book.

( Read more... )

I gave the book four stars, R Smith gave it two.

Let's look at our esteemed friend's replies to our reviews:

( The reply to mine )

( The reply to R Smith's review )

One of the three of us is narrow-minded, but I'm not sure it's me, nor yet that it's R Smith.

But you know, maybe I'm just judging this woman's replies because she types like a drunken monkey. Very narrow-minded of me to care how she chooses to present herself online! Clearly she was very upset by our terrible, terrible reviews of this book and our cruel comments about the author. Perhaps if I were to take out the extra exclamation points... and turn some of them into regular periods*... oh, and add some paragraph breaks... hm.... *squints a little*

Nope! She still comes off as narrow-minded, irrational, and - worst of all - defensive.

Oh well. I tried. Can't say I didn't put in my best effort!

*Exclamation points are like salt. A little goes a long way.