Is this an inappropriate book for a 4yo?

[GreenCereal]

My mum has sent this for DS’s 4th birthday. It says on the front cover it is a road safety story, and is called the Rascally Hedgehog - a young hedgehog called Timmy keeps crossing the road to meet up with friends at nighttime. I’ve attached the last two pages where DH and I thought wtf?

I called mum to ask if she’d actually read it, and she said she thought it was a good book and I could just change the ending if I didn’t like it. Nevermind that DD7 usually reads to DS and I probably wouldn’t show it to her either?

AIBU or am I being too precious?

"Timmy Hedgehog was DEAD. What a SHAME." I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING. Please show us the rest of the book.

Oh that is very funny

I am willing to bet it was written by a parent who is sick to death of saying "How do we cross the road? We STOP, and LOOK, and LISTEN. And we don't EVER run ahead or cross a road alone" to a child who just ignores it all and keeps prancing out into roads without a care in the world.

And now they are DEAD! Yes, DEAD! I told you so.

The end.

I mean, I appreciate that we probably live more rurally than most but my children (3&5 have seen a fair bit of roadkill, it’s just lacking the tombstone. I wouldn’t read it to them because it looks shit but they do understand that getting run over will most likely kill you, not a bad piece of knowledge?

The fact that Timmy is repeatedly referred to as ‘rascally’ (including in the title) is also making me laugh.

It’s like the author got out his thesaurus and thought ‘that’s the adjective for this soon to be dead hedgehog’.

Its just a bit.., incongruous.

4 is perhaps a bit young. My dc (7 & 9) would find it funny, but that’s obviously not the point 😂

That's terrible.

On a similar note, have you seen the videos of the nursery age children being taught about stranger by being absolutely terrified when their friend took some sweets from a stranger and was promptly grabbed and dragged off....can't remember where but an Asian country.

This is hilariously brutal. Dd was given a book as present where a princess riding a unicorn kills a dragon. I was quite shocked when first read it to her, dd however was completely unfazed. She’d probably be quite matter of fact about this book, like yeah if you run in the road you’ll end up dead.

Dh and I have just burst out laughing at this 🤣 totally brutal!
I don’t think it’s appropriate no, it’s such a blunt delivery. We have both just said though that our autistic 9 year dd would probably find this hilarious but she’s totally obsessed with the idea of death at times and doesn’t react to it in the way we see as ‘normal’. She’d probably get to the ending and be like ‘oh well, I guess he should have listened to his dad then’ and just got on with her day. Our ds on the other hand (also autistic) would have been traumatised and would have dwelled on it for a long time afterwards.

Tufty will be turning in his grave!

Well there’s a good lesson learned here with no fucking about isn’t there?! I bloody love it!

It's cute! My youngest aged 4/5 used to enjoy guessing which animal was sadly roadkill when driving to dance.

I was thinking the same thing. Looks like a cheap, badly thought through, mediocre book. Hardly worthy of the paper it is printed on.

Now this book I want to read 🤣🤣🤣

It reminds of when DD1 was 4yo and would get mixed up between the endings of The Enormous Crocodile and Goodbye Mog, resulting in her "reading" to her stuffed animals

"And then Mog went up and up and up and into the sun, and sizzled up like a sausage, because she was DEAD."

"What a SHAME" got me 🤣

Ah well Timmy, tough luck.

What an ending, no cliff hanger there is there...🤣

But yeah maybe not for a 4 year old! Lol

Max the hedgehog is better.

It made me laugh!

I'm not sure I'd read it to a 4 yo though, maybe keep it for when he's older? I know my DDs now (6 and 8) would find it very funny.

Ha ha ha! At least it puts the point across

Goodness, that's a bit much isn't it? 😂 Was a mixture of horrified and amused but then I read the comments and now I'm creasing up. If it were me, I'd burn lose this one, OP. Which would obviously be such a shame.

Imagine the 2023 version? "Pat gets a gastric band in turkey/Pat gets on ozempic/Pat is sick of being fat shamed and embraces his curves".

Meh, good for Pat, wish my fat size 20 arse could be so hard-core. One treat a week? How 90s of you, Pat! 😂

@Withnailandeye but Timmy is anthropomorphised, isn’t he? It isn’t like regular roadkill, he’s (sort of) human.

Mine loved Albert and the lion at that age so I think yabu.

Piggy on a railway
picking up stones.
Along came a train
And broke Piggy’s bones.
”Oh” said Piggy “That’s not fair”
”Oh” said the engine driver “ I don’t care!”

From my copy of This Little Puffin book of Rhymes For Children” c1980.

DS used to finish by triumphantly exclaiming “Then the drive trained off!”
Good job he wasn’t driving a truck. 🤣

I have no guilt about binning bad books!

I haven't seen that but it seems that they do still go for the scare tactics combined with giving young children unreasonable amounts of freedom in some Asian countries. DSes are very fond currently of an Asian Youtube channel called BabyBus which has various tales of safety. There are alarmingly many where the children characters get abducted or chased by a predator that wants to take pictures of their private parts The DC do not seem too traumatised by this. (Though we did have to reassure DS2 that we don't live in an earthquake country).

Perhaps Timmy was a bit lightheaded after being denied breakfast!