When Kiddy Lit Goes Bad

The buzz in the media and the blogosphere concerns a kiddie book about a mom’s plastic surgery. Apparently there are enough mommies getting their parts enhanced/lopped off/reajusted/perked up that there’s a big enough market for this kind of thing. Plus the guy who wrote My Beautiful Mommy, Dr. Michael Salzhauer, is a plastic surgeon. What a great way to publicize his business!

From what I understand, the mommy in his book gets both a nose job and a tummy tuck which also somehow also perks up her, uh, chest area. When the kid asks why she wants to look different, Mommy says she wants to look prettier. The book's cover makes it look like Tinkerbell flew through and magically transformed Mommy in a pleasant non-bloodless way instead of using scalpels, etc.

(Note: My info about the plot came from this morning's Roanoke Times, which used to be a relatively good newspaper before the pages became filled with blots, blotches, foldings, spindlings, mutilations, and other stuff that makes some pages well-nigh unreadable. Like part of the funnies today. I don’t care so much about Prince Valiant being a smudged-up blob, but I couldn’t read the punch-lines in Blondie and Pickles! If anything needs its appearance enhanced, it's the Times.)

Now, I write a bit of kid-lit from time to time, so I've given this new genre some consideration. The problem, as I see it with the plastic surgery book, is that there should be a whole series. Consequently, I offer for all the agents, editors, and publishers who read this blog: Mommy Gets a Nose Job, the first book in the Remaking Mommy series:

Mommy Gets A Nose Job

Mommy has always told me, “Tiffany June, don’t pick your nose.”

“But Mommy,” I protest, wiping the extracted booger onto my GAP sweatshirt, “If I don’t pick it, who will?”

She refuses to answer. Moms are like that. Anyhow, my nose is not as large as hers, which is a real honker. My friends tease me about the size of my mom’s nose.

Some call her Toucan. Some say if she sneezed really bad, she’d blow our town into the next county. Some say that if it rains, I can stand under her nose and not get wet except for some post-nasal drips. Some say that if she suppressed a sneeze, she’d blow her brains out.

Anyhow, the size of Mommy’s nose is affecting my self-esteem. Not to mention my genetic make-up.

Finally Mommy said she might get a new nose even though if meant we wouldn’t be able to afford the trip to Disney world we’d been planning on. Or the big screen high-def TV.

She went to see a special doctor. She decided to get a new nose. Then she told Daddy how much it would cost and they argued about it. Mommy won. She always does.

She took me along with her to help pick out her nose. We looked at a lot of them on the doctor’s computer screen. Finally we decided on a model made popular by Michael Jackson in one of his earlier surgeries.

Anyhow, Mommy went to the hospital and came home with a new nose. Well, she came home with bandages and bruises and black eyes. I guess getting a new nose can be kind of rough. After the bandages came off, there was a lot less of her face then there used to be.

She didn’t look like Mommy anymore, so I lost her a couple of times at the mall. When she went to pick me up at school, the principal called the cops because he thought a stranger was trying to kidnap me. Her glasses keep sliding off her nose. I think she overdid it.

Anyhow, the kids don’t tease me anymore and Mommy is happy.

I guess sometimes you can pick your nose.

Now Mommy is thinking about having more work done. I think she wants a new mouth. She said something about lip-o-suction.

The End

See? That leaves it open for a series—or at least a sequel.

Somehow, though, I doubt that four- to seven-year-old kids really want to read about plastic surgery.

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