Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Uptight-Man surfaces

I know I'm overly sensitive, but picture books aim - in part - to teach kids what words mean.
So why not use the best words available?
For instance, in Babies in the Bayou, by Jim Arnosky, which Madge picked up at the library for Coco (aw, how sweet), there's a picture of a mama duck guiding her babies away from the sleeping alligators. The text reads, "She shepherds them away from danger - "
Like I said, I'm overly sensitive, but why "shepherds"? They're not sheep. It's not the kind of book that would get cute and use "duckherds" but that would at least connect kids with the possibilities of language. What about "guides," or "leads," or simply "herds?"
Oh, well.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Was she biting their ankles and barking?

Anonymous said...

Maybe it was a British author thus the use of other words or the book was written way back when and it was a common word back then. Mama