Cautionary Tales

Anyone who reads my blog on a regular bases knows I often post about my business, Usborne Books and More. While I love everything I have seen so far I was sitting at a book fair board and decided to look at some of the titles I never have. I decided to take a look at a series I have called Cautionary Tales. Each book addresses a behavior we do not want to encourage in our children, but discourage.

I read the first one "Don't Tell Lies Lucy." I figured these stories used a moral and found it they sure did, but not the type I would tell to my young child. Lucy never toke responsibility for her actions, instead she would tell a lye about what happened. Everyone in her family would say to her, "Don't tell lies Lucy." Well one day Lucy stormed off to her room upset that no one believed her lies. She heard her father tell everyone to get out of the house because a big wave was headed straight for it. Lucy screamed from upstairs to her father, "Don't tell lies dad!!" Lucy was taking away from her family by that big wave, I thought this is terrible!!

I continued to read through the rest of the series and each child met with unfortunate situations at the end. Greedy Graham wanted a snake at the zoo, but ended up being eaten by it. Another child was taking away in a space ship, I didn't get to finish the series, gee shucks!! But, I will say this I do not recommend this series of books for teaching a young child how to behave appropriately unless you want to scare them and I hope not.

So, now you can see that while I love what I do and know that Usborne puts out great quality books, there are a few bad apples and this set is one of them.

Have any suggestions for some good books on teaching on topics like lying, bullying, being greedy or others?