Dragons Can't Breathe Fire in New Children's Books

It depends upon how you define politically correct? There is nothing politically incorrect about a dragon breathing fire.

True story. My brother is a professional illustrator and once did the illustrations for children's books but he just could not stand all the BS.

He was once assigned to do a picture of two children, running down a hill, past a well.

He sent in the illustration and it came back with a note saying that the hill was too steep, the children might hurt themselves!

The second illustration came back with a note that the sides of the well were too low, the kids might fall in.

On the third try the art director thought that the kids were going too fast and so there should be a kindly policeman telling them to slow down.

By the time they started second guessing the race and gender of the imaginary kids he had had enough and told them that he had other assignments and was no longer interested in working for them.

They finally ended up sending him a check for the first illustration, only, and using someone else. Since then he has gone on to work on many important projects, including a couple of murals for national parks, but he will not even consider doing children's illustrations again.

Politically correct, or just plain crazy?

When you begin censoring and dissecting reading materials for children to suit a controlling few publishers or public -- where's the encouragement for kids to become critical and creative thinkers as opposed to kids thinking what they are told to think and believe........

There is nothing politically incorrect about a dragon breathing fire.

How do they allow all the Harry Potter stuff and they won't allow this. It is ridiculous it is just imagination.

@ Helena Handbasket
When you begin censoring and dissecting reading materials for children to suit a controlling few publishers or public -- where's the encouragement for kids to become critical and creative thinkers as opposed to kids thinking what they are told to think and believe........

I agree, Helena. This is just too much censorship...apparently the publishers expect children to be unintelligent and not know that a dragon isn't make belive.

This is crazy, but it happens. It does not only happen in the world of children's books, by the way. I have had strange experiences with my own books.

When you began to take away elements of childhood imagination look out. This world is harsh and real enough without disallowing the world of fantasy.

There once was a non-gender specific child who walked down the sidewalk of the street that had traffic consisting of only happy smiley faced people on bicycles who smiled, but didn't take their hands off of the handlebars to wave, or look at the non-gender specific child walking on the sidewalk, because that would be too dangerous.

There was no dog poop on the immaculately clean sidewalk and the non-gender specific child happily strolled along, smiling at the birds and waving at the smiley faced man who was picking up his morning paper where all of the gloriously positive daily news was written about the impossibly perfect world. blah blah blah, you get the point, it's too boring for words....

I'd rather read Dr. Seuss or some story with a moral where the dragon can actually breath fire.

@ Ringwraith
There once was a non-gender specific child who walked down the sidewalk of the street that had traffic consisting of only happy smiley faced people on bicycles who smiled, but didn't take their hands off of the handlebars to wave, or look at the non-gender specific child walking on the sidewalk, because that would be too dangerous.

There was no dog poop on the immaculately clean sidewalk and the non-gender specific child happily strolled along, smiling at the birds and waving at the smiley faced man who was picking up his morning paper where all of the gloriously positive daily news was written about the impossibly perfect world. blah blah blah, you get the point, it's too boring for words....

I'd rather read Dr. Seuss or some story with a moral where the dragon can actually breath fire.

Good one, excellent analogy. Perhaps we should all just wipe out all the bad stuff that could possibly happen in life and create little bubble rooms for kids to play in, with Big Brother filtering out all the bad news so they will never get hurt and never feel pain or fear. How crappy is that?

@ Carolyn E. Price (gohomelaker)
Good one, excellent analogy. Perhaps we should all just wipe out all the bad stuff that could possibly happen in life and create little bubble rooms for kids to play in, with Big Brother filtering out all the bad news so they will never get hurt and never feel pain or fear. How crappy is that?

And, what lessons would the children learn? I think bad stuff along with good stuff teaches children some very important life lessons that they would not be taught otherwise!