Pity The Poor Children

I was skimming the articles on CNN.com yesterday and noticed a particularly sad one: A woman who had been in a iron lung for 50 years died because her home lost electricity and her family couldn't keep the iron lung running. Our country can spend billions of dollars and lots of scientists' time and energy sending a remote-controlled soda can to Mars to look at rocks, but we can't keep someone's iron lung running if the power goes out. Awesome (not really).

(Look! Rocks!)

But the article also mentioned that the woman in the iron lung had written a children's book. Which makes me wonder: why is it that everyone thinks they can write children's books? I don't have children nor do I particularly like them, but I do feel sorry for them because an awful lot of people are writing books for them, especially celebrities.

Madonna has written children's books. Think about it. Do you really want your kid reading books written by a 55ish year old woman who still dresses like a two-bit whore and ruined the career of a once-promising British movie director? Is that the model citizen we want to promote to today's youth?

(And Madonna thinks, "I love you, Photoshop!")

Other celebrities who have written children's books: Will Smith, John Travolta ("Hey, Mr. Kotter! I thought you were L. Ron Hubbard, I swear!"), LeAnn Rimes (I'm not sure who she is but she wrote a children's book about a jaguar.... named Jag. How very original.)

Would it be too much to ask to have some decent celebrities write children's book? If I'm going to give my hypothetical child a book written by someone famous, could it at least be someone like Helen Thomas ("So I says to Netanyahu, I says...") or maybe Rob Halford? Seriously, children's books written by Rob Halford would be awesome.