Don't Judge a Book By It's Cover-or How I Inadvertently Taught My 15-month-old Daughter Where Bacon Comes From

After spending months helping maintain the kid's book department, I should have known better. Maybe, just maybe, it would be best to pre-read the entire book myself before unleashing it on my fifteen-month-old daughter. Sometimes kids books have messages that, while not necessarily objectionable, just aren't lessons I want to teach my girl. Or sometimes the problem is more obvious, like the book about a worm that, unfortunately, looks like a giant penis leaping from every page.

While combing the clearance section (yes, part of the problem is that I'm a cheapskate), I came across Animals on the Farm. Cute animals on the cover, Grace loves animals, let's plunk down two bucks and hit the road. The book went on the shelf at home and wasn't thought of again until Grace picked it out for me to read to her.

I really love story time with Grace, so I'm really getting into it as we comb each page, reading about and looking at pictures of the different topics- "The Animals in Our Lives", "Noisy Birds in the Barnyard", "The Other Birds on the Farm", "Visiting the Rabbits", and "The Peaceful Cow". Then she flips to this page:

Now, I'm no prude and I'm certainly no red-paint-throwing vegan PETA member. In fact, I'm quite delighted to reside at the top of the food chain. However, I'm not ready to explain to Grace that the pork chop she had for dinner last night was, according to the handy diagram above, sliced off the top of a cute little piggy. Especially not with Piglet and her piggy bank staring me down from the dresser top. Obviously, Grace can't yet read and I omitted the crucial info, but I suppose it does beg the more serious question of when to have these types of conversations with your young children. Perhaps I'll tackle that question another time; right now I'm more worried about this how this little misstep is affecting my Father of the Year chances.