I am not a fan of Disney book adaptations.

I have various issues with Disney already. In college, my partner and I created a case against Disney for many different human rights violations, environmental concerns, and general commercialistic crap that the company is associated with. I don’t like it when my daughter gets Disney gifts (even though I, too, am a sucker for The Princess and the Frog)—though, to be fair, I don’t like it when she gets any trademarked gifts, really.

When we choose library books, however, I let her pick out what she wants, as long as it’s from the children’s section. Lately, she’s chosen a few Disney movie adaptations—Robin Hood, Aladdin, and The Lion King—when we go to the library.

And these books really stink.

And I don’t mean that they stink because of the issues I mentioned above, or that they literally smell bad; they are simply horribly written. Instead of the vibrant animals and characters we know from the films, we get these poorly illustrated (through wordy, verbose storytelling) characters who speak in clumsy, boring dialogue. The good parts (especially anything funny or remotely interesting) are completely removed, keeping in only enough details for the story to blandly move along until the ending. The books are too long, very boring, and have made this reader—who has always been against it—even skip sentences as she reads just to get through the disasters.

The horror!

The real horror, of course, is that my daughter keeps choosing the books. I was certain that she’d chosen them because she’d seen the films, but she had yet to see Aladdin when she chose that one recently. I’m left with the simple fact that perhaps she simply likes the books. Oh, boy.

I can live with that, I guess. As long as she can live with me skipping super boring sentences and inserting my own explanation (as I often do; and if that’s why she likes them, maybe I should be flattered, eh?) until she’s old enough to either move on from the books or to figure out what I’m doing…!

That won’t be long, either. So maybe I should simply get used to reading the books as they were written. In turn, maybe doing so will turn her off of them from the sheer boredom. A mom can dream, right? Of course, I can remain stoked that she enjoys books at all, period, which really should be the celebrated and highlighted occurrence here.