It’s in a grey area where it could be either. I heard it when it came out growing up, and I’m just barely young enough to plausibly be the father of a second-grader but slightly too young to plausibly be the grandfather of a second-grader since that would require two generations of pretty early parenthood.
That’s more a little difficult to believe.
I suspect Sendak was amusing himself at the expense of the interviewer
Cooks in In the Night Kitchen
https://www.ebay.com/itm/124244840369
Oliver Hardy
Adolph Hitler
Yeah, our copy of “I Need a New Butt” fell out of rotation about a year or two ago as well, and I have a second grader myself.
The thing is, the book isn’t overly profane or scatological. It’s not “Walter the Farting Dog”, which is the ne plus ultra of early childhood fart/ass books.
The whole premise is that it’s a faulty butt because it’s got a huge crack in it! So the kid goes on about whether he needs a chrome plated butt, or a robot one, or a rocket one. If I remember right, he decides that he likes his own butt just fine.
It’s a book for little kids, aimed at their sense of humor. It’s not particularly gross, unless you’re one of those blue-noses who feel like people shouldn’t discuss farts, butts or poop at all, in which case it’ll give you a case of the vapors, and doubly so because it’s aimed at children.
It may be because that’s when my kids were going through the phase, but I do remember about two or three years ago poop-themed toys just being everywhere. I’m sure they’re still around, but I remember counting something like seven or eight different toys at the local Target based around poop: from poop plush emojis to toilet board games to unicorn poop to poop putty to even remote-controlled poop. Oh, and fart sound-effect books, too. It’s all harmless fun.
Yeah, we somehow ended up with some kind of “Farts of the Animal Kingdom” book that makes all sorts of squeaks and bubbles and thunderous farts, depending on what animal it’s talking about. Pretty funny in a childish and toilet humor sort of way, actually.
My 6 year old daughter after school today: “Guess what? Our teacher read I Need a New Bum*! It was funny. When the teacher read out the title, everyone laughed.” She then offered up, “didn’t a school principal get fired for reading that book?”
She doesn’t often talk much about school, having prematurely gone to teenage monosyllabic responses to questions about how her school day was, so it was nice to hear her volunteer information about her day.
- It is a NZ book, I didn’t know that. I Need a New Bum is the original title.
Bit of a hijack, but my understanding is that “sucks” as in “that sucks” doesn’t qctually come from “suck dick” as one might expect; it comes from older usages like the British “sucks hind tit” (as in, the runt of a litter) or “sucks to” (as in Lord of the Flies, “sucks to your asmar”)
It was a 10-minute read for laughs, fer cryin’ out loud. It was not a lesson plan.
My understanding is that it gained currency among soldiers in 60s and 70s, and clearly implied “sucks dick”. But that connotation has been largely lost.
“Sucks” is probably like calling someone a pussy. We think it refers to women’s genitalia but it actually comes from “pusillanimous” meaning a coward.
“We think” = descriptivism
“Actually is” = prescriptivist
And you know who always wins
That’s not even remotely correct.
Yes it is
Huh?
Descriptivist=“actual usage”
Prescriptivist=“advised usage”
That’s not the same thing as “we think” and “actually is.”
I understand that “this word means what we’ve collectively come to understand what it means.”
But what if we’re wrong? And doesn’t that make it easier for those with bad intentions to twist meanings?
How would that even be possible?
I was thinking of this thread when two more examples came to mind- both Saturday morning cartoons.
On the late great Mucha Lucha ( a cartoon about Mexican masked wrestler kids) there is an episode where in the three main charactets (Ricochet, Buena Girl and The Flea) are stalked by a masked toilet. No wrestling move they try can stop it. The Flea has a flash of insight and defeats the dreaded porcelain by defecating in it.
Those of us who grew up in the 80’s may remember MUSCLE THINGS. They were odd figurines made of pink plastic. They were actually only a small part of the merchandising made for Ultimate Muscle, a Japanese cartoon. When the cartoon finally aired in the US, it was revealed that besides super human strength and toughness Kid Muscle has super farts. The themesong even included the line “Strength and speed and flatulence”
Well, words have concrete meanings. If the original “concrete” of the word is flawed, as we can look back at the artificial strictness of terms for gender identification, sure, blow up the foundation. The original prescription was wrong: correct it.
OTOH, otherwise insignificant differences matter in terms of context. The “C-word” comes from “cunny,” a variation of “bunny,” not much different from a kitten as a slang description of a hairy vulva. But call someone a “pussy” or a “C-word” and the results will not be the same.
I don’t advocate going overboard on this, and recoil at “I received a present in the mail,” or “the wooden house was dilapidated.” But a few years ago a coworker caught a fingertip in a chain and nipped off the skin and nail. The ER doctor correctly marked it an “avulsion.” Then the follow-up doctor marked it an “amputation.” (Coincidence - he could bill higher for an amputation). Luckily the switch was caught before all the legal and regulatory fallout from an actual amputation occurred.
It was M.U.S.C.L.E, not MUSCLE THINGS, but yeah, I remember them. In middle school, there was a toy store near my house that started carrying them before they blew up real big, and I had a good couple weeks where kids at school would give me money to buy them a clear plastic trash can full of little pink wrestlers, before the school administration caught wind of it and made me stop.
Yes.
Google M.U.S.C.L.E. or Kinnikuman and you’ll find that there is still a significant fandom and collectors community.