Sometimes, when I get bored, I read Amazon reviews.

The ones on Blubber are great. Some of them make good points, but they're so caught up in their own SHOCK and HORROR that they're utterly useless. (Especially the ones who claim that the book is unrealistic because a. kids in the fifth grade don't act that way or b. the bullies never get caught. You might criticize the book for portraying this, sure, you might prefer a neater ending where everybody is friends or where the mean girls get what's coming to them, got it - but that doesn't mean it'll be more realistic that way.)

But my favorite runs like this.

A woman's daughter was reading Blubber, came to a point where one character calls another a "bitch", showed the page to her mother and said "I don't think I should be reading this", whereupon the woman came to amazon to complain that NOW she had to READ all these BOOKS before giving them to her daughter, and WHO has the TIME!!!

To which I say:

1a. Your daughter clearly already knew the word "bitch" or she would not have been able to identify it in writing.
1b. She also knew that one doesn't use that word in polite conversation.
1c. And she ALSO decided she should not read books using this sort of language.
2. Blubber is not exactly a weighty tome. And yes, if you intend to censor your child's reading, you need to make it a point to be familiar with WHAT they are reading. It's not the author's job to guess what sort of books you won't let your kid read. (My parents didn't censor our reading, but they read most books we read, and why not?)

I mean, here's what I don't get. It's one thing to say "I don't want to teach my child that word" or even "I don't want to create the false impression that I think that language is okay". But she's already succeeded at that! What on earth is she worried about at this point? (For the record, the main character takes the time to explain that her parents don't mind about language so long as they don't go screaming it around the house. This is a perfectly valid parenting philosophy, and the kid is aware that it'd be a bad idea to call her teacher a bitch to her face, which is just about all we can hope for when it comes to profanity. At some point you can't duct tape their mouths anymore.)

A HANDMADE SQUIRREL CONTEST!

http://brooklyngeneral.blogspot.com/2010/04/handmade-squirrel-contest-it-takes-tree.html

You can crochet it, knit it, felt it, sew it....

*winces*

See, now, I donated all my little gift codes over to DonorsChoose already. And when you fund a project, the teacher writes a little thank you note. Usually this is just nice. Sometimes, though...

"The manipulative's that I will be receiving soon, will help my students grasp some very difficult math concepts through doing and not just memorizing."

This woman teaches third grade in a dual language program where not all the students are fluent in English. If she can't manage consistent apostrophe use, could she use her commas the right way? Either you stick one before "that i will be receiving soon" or you take them both away. How hard is this? She needs to start setting a better example.

And I know we all make mistakes sometimes (for example, I just typed "soemtimes"), but this is her public face. It's a letter of thanks to people who donated money to help her and her students. If it only takes a minute, use another minute to proofread it. Sending out something with mistakes and typos not only reflects badly upon her as a teacher, but it also is just unprofessional and, honestly, damn rude. If she doesn't care enough to make herself look good, why should we care enough to help her out? It's not even a matter of informal speech, or of dialects where you can (and I typically would) argue that different versions are appropriate in different situations. Okay, a chatty, breezy tone might not be what the style books would advise, but sometimes it's a good idea even in more formal letters. I can understand that, but this isn't that. This is just wrong-ness.