Celebrity Kid's Books

The boss is really riding me this week, and I think I’m starting to crack.

After I got in from lunch he stormed into my office, red faced and stinking like the coffee muck he swills all day. He was talking before he even rounded the corner.

The kids ah gettin’ wise to these plot devices. He said. They’re sharp Al, they ain’t buying none of dis daeus ex machina bullshit any moah. The lone woodsman used to be able to strut right into gramma’s house and save Goldilocks, but it ain’t gonna fly anymore pal, sorry, but it just ain’t gonna fly.

He was referring, of course, to my most famous work, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. As far as children’s stories go, it was pretty well received, and right after its publication my career really took off. Everybody wanted a piece of the action from the guy that wrote Goldilocks. Including, Evan, my boss.

Listen Al, ‘cause I’m tellin’ ya, you gotta work on fleshin’ out dese characters. You useda be able to get away wid Humpty Dumpty fallin’ off a wall and shit and not explainin’ nutin’, but dat was the past guy. Now dese kids hear the word “Dumpty” and they think you’re taking a crap. They just aren’t taking you seriously anymore Al. It ain’t your fault, and I’m sorry, but dat’s just how the cards got played.

I should’ve worked for Doubleday.

So I’m breathing some life into this Humpty fellow like Evan wants. But writing childrens stories is harder than you’d think. Especially nowadays that everyone is writing a children’s story. I mean how can I compete with the likes of Madonna’s The English Roses, and Katie Couric’s The Blue Ribbon Day? I can’t. But I’m retooling Humpty nonetheless, just like Evan wants.

First of all I’m taking more of a bare-bones approach, kind of like Leno did in If Roast Beef Could Fly. And I’ve dropped the rhyme scheme all together. Couplets are great if you’re a retard, but if these kids can read Jamie Lee Curtis’ It’s Hard to be Five whenever they want, so why would they ever pick up a nursery rhyme?

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men are getting scrapped too. We all know these kids don’t want to hear about feudalism. They’re getting raised on books for the everyman, like Jerry Seinfeld’s Halloween, or Ricky Gervais’ Flanimals. The kings and queens should be saved for history lectures.

So, all I have now is Humpty, a broken shell of a man, balanced on the edge of a wall and the edge of his sanity.

Does he jump? Of course he jumps. But the question remains, what thoughts drove Humpty to break his body against the gum stained sidewalk? What words hang like a whisper on his lips, as his last breath slips from his mouth, and his yellow life-yolk seeps from his shattered, chitin shell?

Truthfully? I don’t know, god damn it fucking hell, I don’t know.

This story will be the ruin of me. I can already taste my failure. But despite it all, the kids will keep on coming. They’ll keep on coming with their biting judgements and their voracious appetites for literature, and with their parents, eagerly following behind them with bulging pockets, ready like a cowboy at a quickdraw to buy anything their young ones want. And I will be there to watch it all, impotent to serve them.

But perhaps…perhaps Will Smith’s new Just the Two of us will satiate them in ways I never could…perhaps.