Children’s Books

» Sascha23 - Mennyms in the 21st Century

I read the whole Mennyms series this weekend and find it the scariest set of books I have read -- and I'm 59 years old and have been reading since I was 3!

In today's world where terror cells spring up from perfectly ordinary neighbourhoods it is truly scary as Ms. Waugh points out, that we don't look at neighbours, at the people who sell things to us or from whom we buy, and now that everything can be done on line, we don't even see one another unless we choose to. When the Shawn Hornbeck kidnapping case came up, it occurred to me that every apartment in my building could be full of kidnapped children and I wouldn't know it, because everyone leaves the house at 8:00 and arrives home at around 6:00 and I couldn't pick any of the other tenants out of a line-up if I had to.

In point of fact, everyone I chat with on line (except for 10-Tenthers and some racing people) could be a rag doll and I wouldn't know the difference. I live in a city neighbourhood where people come and go late at night and I admit that I have never looked at any jogger closely enough to see if he might have a blue face.

In my opinion the Mennyms are the "Who Goes There?" of the 21st century. Reading those books would point out to a city person how little awareness we have of what's going on around us...and what could be lurking behind those curtains, under that hoodie, or scuffing along with the iPod earbuds jammed in place and the volume cranked up to 11.

Fortunately they can never be made into a movie, although it might be interesting to have Stephen King do a movie about them from the POV of the neighbourhood humans ....

-- posted by Sascha23