Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Ben Franklin, Muhammed Ali, and Me.

The three of us have one thing in common. We all were born on this day. I did get in trouble as a kid trying to fly a kite in a thunderstorm once, but we won't count that as part of this commonality bond. The closest thing to Muhammed Ali and me probably were our mouths. Mine got me in a lot of trouble, his made him famous. Which brings me to this review on a short fiction piece of mine called Phil's Last Day.

By 
This review is from: Phil's Last Day (Kindle Edition)
I was looking for a Groundhog Day book to share with my elementary students. The appealing picture caught my eye but thanks to the Peek Inside feature, I could see that this humorous tale was not appropriate for school kids. Phil wants to know, "What the hell happened?" When he finds out he's being replaced. Older kids and adults might enjoy it but not for younger folks.

Now, this is where my mouth and Muhammed Ali's come into play. I just had to respond to this teacher. All of my books have a feature called, "Look Inside," this allows the potential buyer to get a glimpse of what the book is about, and what's actually inside. Ms. Smith, no relation to Ms. Doe, evidentally glimpsed inside the book and saw the word, "hell." The word hell and the word damn is used one time each in the entire short story. The woman never read the entire story, she came to a screeching halt at the word, hell. The story is not tagged for children, education, elementary, or anything that leads you to believe it is a kid's book. It is listed as satire, and humor. I didn't mind that she left me a review about her concerns, but I didn't like the fact that without bothering to read the story, she decided it deserved two stars. The rating system is based on a five-star system. I'm glad she wasn't grading my papers when I was in elementary school. I wonder if she realised the words hell is used a total of 54 times in the Bible, and damn, in the form of damnation, and damned is used 11 times. I'm sure it wouldn't receive two stars for usage from her.

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