I have to throw out a book

[heidi]

It's from Disney's Adventure Collection and the sticker on front says, "Lead your child to reading success!"

The first story is a Peter Pan one.

The second to last line on the first page says, "He was searching for the Darling's house."

I can't read anymore, and I won't allow this in my house because it's just such a basic, stupid error. And I won't give it away, for that would spread ignorance. I'm shredding the page and throwing the rest into recycling.

Ew.

Comments

[karenhealey.livejournal.com]

An excellent and judicious response.

[rookie131.livejournal.com]

I'm reading "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" now. If I thought those things annoyed me before, it is much worse now.

[empressov.livejournal.com]

Excellent book! I think I might have heard she also has a newer book out...?

[empressov.livejournal.com]

Ok, just bought it for ~$4 on Amazon's used bookstore. Will send on to you when I'm done reading. :D

See? It's like heroin addicts sharing needles only with less disease.

[bibliophile20.livejournal.com]

she's also published Talk To The Hand (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592401716/qid=1142351905/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-9155927-4244604?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)

[lazy-daze.livejournal.com]

>:O! Quite right, I would.

[dejaspirit.livejournal.com]

Heidi. Chill.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I think I need to visit some pandas.

[dejaspirit.livejournal.com]

Yeah you do. It's a friggin' apostrophe. LOL. It happens.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Annoying, yes, but you're a broadminded, tolerant type... which is why you love Paradigm of Uncertainty, despite its relentless misspelling of "Weasley" as "Weasely."

[wendywoowho.livejournal.com]

GOOD LORD!!!

I hope you write to the publisher. Better still, send the book back to the publisher, with a scathing note.

[aome.livejournal.com]

Pffft. Why throw a book out over a misplaced apostrophe? Just hand-correct it.

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

Or better yet, teach Harry about apostrophes and recruit him to help you mock it. Kids like mocking adults. :))

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't normally, but it's supposed to teach reading skills, and if this is on the first page, imagine how much worse it'll be a few pages in. It's a 100+ page book!

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Dear Disney,

Where is your proofreader, Hmmmmmm?

- PH

[ancarett]

I'm with the "pillory the publisher" on this one. I'd take a digital photo before destroying the offending book and demand that the publisher address the problem. Of course, this being a cheap-o Disney endeavour, I'm not even sure they hire people to actually read the mail that comes in. . . .

[shelaghc.livejournal.com]

Personally. I'd contact the publisher and tell them about their extremely poor punctuation skills, ask for my money back and inform them that you're going to let other parents know about the glaring error.

[prettyveela.livejournal.com]

Aw man, lol.

Hey quick question on the Wiki, I just tried to register and I can't. It only allows you to log in, do you have to approve us first or something?

[empressov.livejournal.com]

I have actually returned a book or two because of finding unforgivable grammar errors. It was all I could do not to actually circle the errors with red magic marker--I settled for a post-it pointing to it. The girl at B&N wasn't all that surprised so I guess there are others.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Is it quite possible that Peter is looking for the Darling, ie, Wendy? I believe there's a line somewhere in the original Barrie book about Wendy being The Darling.

I'm with the people who say you should use it as an educational aide and hand-correct it. You've already paid for the book, what's the use in wasting it? Or hand-correct it and then donate it to a literacy programme. They'd be happy to have it, I'm sure, bad apostrophes or not.

Perhaps I'm just touchy about the subject :D I've been over at www.firstbook.org investigating them as a possible beneficiary for an upcoming fandom event involving those drabbles I wrote, and charity PR always affects me.

[goldie-black.livejournal.com]

Darling's house? geez.

[heybritney.livejournal.com]

wait, what is it supposed to be?

[dragonrider7.livejournal.com]

...this would be a good time to get into your bomb shelter. With the current tensions on this post, might be a smart idea.

[heybritney.livejournal.com]

yeah this is true... but it's ten in the morning here, i'm a college student, my brain doesn't wake up till at least twelve.

[dragonrider7.livejournal.com]

You're clearly not an english major (And no offense meant there, honestly)

[heybritney.livejournal.com]

Hahah, no, definitely not. I'm engineering. (:
I swear I can actually do better than that, I realized as soon as I posted that that given the nature of the conversation, that was probably a bad idea. I actually do write for fun and even have a grammar handbook handy that I go through when I edit my work, but... When I'm just talking and typing, I tend to use my own special e-grammar. It has maybe one too many semicolons and commas. Sorry.

[misscora.livejournal.com]

The Darlings are a family, ie: more than one person, so while it would be 'Wendy Darling's house', if your talking about all of them the last name picks up a s on its on: 'The Darlings have dinner at six' so to write that something is possessive to all of them the apostrophe goes after the pluralizing s: 'the Darlings' house.'

[heybritney.livejournal.com]

aah. Got it. Thank you! (:

[calidona.livejournal.com]

Return it. Then you will get your money back. Tell them the reason.

[wicked-goddess.livejournal.com]

I hate when people randomly friend me and I don't know why, so "hi," I just friened you. I saw your name on the Finn wank that someone on my flist directed me to, and thought, "Hey isn't that Heidi from TiTM? Heidi who Pody talks so fondly of? She's got an lj? Must go friend her!!"

So yeah, here I am!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Well, hi! I think I'm still subscribed to TITM but it's been about a year since I read it regularly -I think a few weeks after Paul...

What Finn wank, btw? Meep!

[wicked-goddess.livejournal.com]

Someone on my flist linked me to this,; it looks like the Finn's have finally made Fandom Wank!

I mostly lurk on TiTM, and never actually ventured over to the message board, so I missed this all as it happened.

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

Erk. What a very basic error. That reminds me of why I really hate the Scholastic edition of "The Thief Lord"; the translation from the German is utter crap and in dire need of editing to make it ENGLISH, and it's a kids' book! They're supposed to have some high-falluting mission to educate kids but I wouldn't rec anything from Scolastic that wasn't written by an American because they clearly don't care about the educating; they're just all about making money. (Look at the way they butchered JKR's first book, after all.)

I also get this British shelter mag that has that apostrophe mistake ALL THROUGH IT, every issue! Sets my teeth on edge. Oy. How do you run a magazine and that error doesn't jump out at you every time? I don't get it.