A Sleep-Deprived Children's Book Review

“More and More Ant and Bee.” 

Rating: ZZZZZ (out of 10)  

Right out of the gate, why the italics on “more and more”? Calm down.  

Anyhow, Ant and Bee go to some girl’s house and first thing they do is get her playing with a bow and arrow in the backyard, with an entire page given to the word “arrow” along with a picture as if I don’t know what an arrow is. I do. I also know it could easily kill a little girl in the hands of some idiot insect. But after reading and re-reading “More and More Ant Bee,” apparently the nth in the Ant and Bee series (no doubt quick on the heels of “More Ant and Bee” and the original, the granddaddy of ‘em all:  “Ant and Bee”), I realize that looking for good sense in this godawful book is fruitless and frankly I wish the girl would turn the arrow on those bugs and their saccharine bullshit. I mean Kind Dog is one thing. He seems like a decent guy, rocks that Tyrolean, arrives just in time - every time - I mean the guy seems worth his weight.  But Ant and Bee are really just a couple of poncy Londoners crashing other people’s parties. Like hell you “just fell” in that buttered bread.  Later, after surviving the arrow episode, Ant and Bee, along with a Nurse, convince the girl not to play with a knife, because apparently knives are dangerous but arrows are no biggie. They remind the girl that knives are only for big people and “the nurse said she was a BIG person.”  Like, how big? Cuz those caps are making me picture a massively overweight nurse.  On and on it blithely goes, the Girl confessing she prefers the plate with the Queen on it to the one with the King.  No shit. At this point I’m waiting for an amazingly racist picture of THE HELP.  Admittedly my edition is a British family heirloom, the copyright dated 1961, so the social positioning of the book is hardly to be surprised at and can be contextualized, but the fact remains that Ant and Bee are dicks. To be missed.