I've got a mini-problem.

Ana and Evangeline sometimes come out with gems of wholly inaccurate information. For example, in California they told us that they thought if water got in their ear they could go blind.

Me and my mom: No, honey, in fact, that's pretty much the stupidest thing that's ever been said, seriously.

Them: But Grandma said...!

See, now, there's the problem. If it should happen again (we found out after the fact that Grandma is also responsible for them thinking mice and raccoons go seeking out little girls to get sick, although how much of this is what she actually said and how much of this is small child hyperbole and blame-shifting, I don't know), what do we say? I mean, if we've already dismissed the idea as being completely asinine and without merit. If we know in advance where the idea came from we can say "sometimes grown-ups make mistakes, sweetie", but usually they don't pull out their credited source the first time we ask, only after we share our opinions on their little tidbit of false information. (I hate that. If I ask who told you, and you say you don't know, keep saying you don't know! Don't remember after we tell you you're wrong! NOT COOL. That's what happened when Ana's friend told her sex = grown-ups kissing in bed. It took me a month to track down where she heard this! Well, actually, that explanation of sex isn't that far off, but anyway.)

Hey, hey, LJ, what on earth should I say?

Hey, guys, wanna uprate a review on amazon?

This review is the ONLY critical review of the 1940 Newberry Winner Daniel Boone.

The review points out that the book has a lot of very racist commentary (and gives an example) and that it's not fair to call it a biography when there's no proof of any of this information - it could've been made up whole cloth for all we know.

I suspect that the review has been rated down so often (18 unhelpfuls out of 44 votes!) because... well, let's just look at another review:

The one star review this book received was unfair. The malicious reviewer revealed more about his own prejudices and the modern shame of unbridled political correctness than he did about the work in question.

I agree that the book was probably a product of its times (I haven't read it, though I'm assuming the quoted portions are accurate), but that doesn't mean that we have to read it now if we don't want to. Not every Newberry winner is, y'know, a winner. (I just read Ginger Pye the other day. Unusual in that not only does the dog NOT die, it comes back after being stolen. Boringest book I've read in a while, though.)

So, there aren't many reviews on this book. I don't want you to spam this review with thumbs up votes, but go read it, and vote it as helpful if you think that it is, in fact, a helpful review.