Wait...let me back up.
See, we offer storytime twice a week for the local daycare center. We open an hour early and we read some books to the kiddies and then let them loose to check out books for home. Great. Wonderful. Except for two tiny little problems.
I really don't like little kids. And I HATE doing storytime. Loathe it. I'm no good at it and the kids can smell my fear.
Today was the first day back for the daycare and the first day of storytime. I'm stuck with Wednesdays, an hour out of my day which I actively dread.
So today, I thought I'd cash in on the easy charm of Halloween books. Yes, I know it's more than a month away, but kids like Halloween and they like books about Halloween.
I picked two books: Midnight the Halloween Cat and Skeleton Hiccups. Short, lots of big pictures. The kids yawned their way through Midnight. One little girl kept getting up and going to browse the little kid's bookshelves, WHILE I WAS READING. This, of course, distracted both me and the little kids.
After the tortured reading of Midnight, I moved on to Skeleton Hiccups. This one killed with the kiddies last year.
Halfway through the book, a little boy in front said, loudly, "I don't like this book."
I stumbled to a halt and stared at him for a moment before continuing. Two pages later another little boy said, "This is scary."
Four more children agreed and when the skeleton tried to stop his hiccups by standing on his head and drinking a glass of water and the water poured out of his empty eye sockets, the retarded girl began to cry. At this point, I stopped and let them choose their own books to check out.
The teacher took me aside and asked me to show her the books before I read them.
The retarded girl's mom glared at me for the rest of the morning. Some of the little kids were so freaked out by the book that they just wanted to leave.
Little kids are evil, selfish little monsters and I have no use for them. Except Baby J and even she gets real annoying sometimes. I think I'll stick with Hilde the Wondercat and avoid the whole spawning of children thing. Little kids and me just don't get along.
