Kids stories dumbing down

Hi all,

I was reading to my kids before they went to bed last night and I chose one of their books from the library. Libraries are morgues of paper, all those dusty books, placed on shelves, their names barely visible until you scrape the dust and cobwebs of years from their covers. Then the gleaming realisation that you have found a long lost friend.

Anyway, We got them The 3 Little Pigs which has been retold, as it were, by someone called Ian Beck. This probably isn't his real name as publishers like authors first names to be shorter than their surnames so they look better when titled. I digress. What I would like to draw your attention to, is page 6.

"The second little pig met a man who was carrying sticks. 'Excuse me', he asked, 'would you give me those sticks so I may build myself a house?'
'Of course,' replied the man, 'I've forgotten why I was carrying them in the first place.'

So this pig had found a bloke carrying enough sticks to build a house, and he had forgotten why he was carrying them! I'm sure if I was carrying enough sticks to build a house I'd bloody remember why I was carrying. No. What the mans reply should have been was this:

'Of course, well spoken pig. Your reward for learning the English language in such an eloquent manner shall be these sticks I am carrying for no particular reason, and my role as a plot device is now over.' The man then vanished in a puff of brightly coloured illustration.

I think that if stories are going to be blatantly dumbed down for kids they need some kind of explanation. Otherwise in future the kids will think that adults carry stuff for no reason at all in case that homeless pigs may need the materials for a nice detached house in the Lake District.

In future I shall be vetting these story books to avoid all these problems.

Thanks for reading!