For Christmas Josh got the book "The Candy Shop War" by Brandon Mull. I had heard a lot of good things about it and Josh had too. We've slowly been reading it and I've been having a super hard time with it. This review on Goodreads expresses my thoughts exactly:
"The
children who are excited to see a new candy shop opening in their town
are enticed with "magic" candy (red flag) and then told to do things for
the lady who owns the store. She insists on secrecy (red flag) and
threatens to withhold the magic candy if they tell their parents or any
adults about her (red flag). She then makes "white fudge" and give it
free to the adults which makes them unaware of anything and leaves them
lethargic (red flag). She (the candy shop owner) even comments to the
kids that she knows they're not supposed to take things from
strangers.... (red flag).
The book just paralleled drug use and the
way young people are led into trying drugs. It was very disturbing and
sadly I let my eight year old grandson read it before I did. I just
can't find anything to recommend in this book aimed at children."
We were in the middle of the fourth chapter when I closed the book and said "I just can't do it anymore. I don't think this is a good book and I feel like they're not being a good example."
"But mom, it's just pretend" Josh said.
"I know, but there are things in here that make me uncomfortable. I don't like that they're doing all this 'secret' stuff and that it keeps referring to drugs. I don't feel like that's good stuff to be reading about."
"But I really want to know how it ends!"
"I know bud, and I'm sorry but I just don't think it's appropriate."
"But mom! It only has a little bad stuff in it and the rest is good."
I paused, trying to come up with a good analogy. I thought I had one so I said "Josh, what if I had a snickers candy bar, are those good?"
"Yes."
"Ok, now what if I gave you the snickers candy bar but I covered it in dog poop first. Would that be good?"
"Eww, no."
"Would you eat it?"
"Yes."
"What?! That's disgusting! You would eat dog poop?" I demanded.
"I would wash it off first."
"Gross bud. No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't even think about eating it because it had dog poop on it and there's no way that you could wash it all off. So my point is that even though there are some good parts in this book, there's also a lot of bad stuff too. Just like with the snickers, you would eat the snickers if it was clean, and if this book was clean, I would love to finish reading it to you. But unfortunately, they decided to put some bad stuff in here and it's covered up the good. We're not going to finish reading it, I'm sorry."
He was pretty disappointed with my decision and pouted for a good long while to let me know how upset he was. I pouted right back to let him know how disgusted I was that he thought he could wash dog poop off a candy and then eat it. Ok, I didn't really, but maybe I should have.
