That's Some Tasty Soup

Satire comes in many shapes and sizes. In this particular case, a children's story- or rather, what appears to be a child-friendly story. Guess looks really can be deceiving, right? It is certainly not a book one should be judging the cover of. The "Don't judge a book by it's cover" saying in fact, is the basic concept behind the picture book  There's a Hair in My Dirt! A Worm's Story by Gary Larsen.  This story about the environment, and one that readily mocks the knowledge people have about the world they live in, is a masterpiece of irony.

The book begins with a worm unsatisfied with being, well, a worm; but, to be honest, who wouldn't be? Anyway, the worm, who happens to be the son of a worm family, is then told a story by his proud worm father. It is begun with a princess named Harriet and the lovely walk she takes on a particularly nice day. As dear princess Harriet saunters about, she points out many animals in her forest and speaks ideas that seem normal, until of course father worm elaborates on Harriet's observations, making her seem- unfortunately- rather stupid to be frank. Even more ironic though is the fact that Harriet's beliefs are real common misconceptions spread by ignorant people. The book also uses intense diction in comparison to its silly art style, and ends up being much more morbid than one would expect. Larsen's choice of picture-book format, which juxtaposes his plot and word choice,  puts a great amount of emphasis on his main point, that one should understand something before blindly accepting it as it is.

With unexpected high diction, and the ability to turn common belief into a stupidly absurd opinion, the book manages expertly to point out a huge flaw in society. The ending has quite an unexpected finish, but I won't spoil it for you. It's definitely a "children's" book you should check out when you get the chance.

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