love this book. Mr. Munsch expresses so well the lesson that we all want our children to learn and that is to make sure they can take care of themselves. Don't wait for that knight in shinning armour because what you may find out when he/she arrives is that the armour is tarnished and they need you to rescue them. Well put Mr. Munsch, very well put. This is one lesson that we all need to learn and remember son or daughter.

For anyone who has seen any of my reviews you're probably looking and going what the hell? Karen's lost her mind. Sorry no...well maybe but rumor has it that happened a long time ago. No this review is being done for two reasons:

#1 Because I was posting on someone else's review and the topic happened to be babies and it reminded me of this book. I have read this book probably upwards of 30 times and cried every single time. Why? you might wonder, if you've never read the book. As a mother, I can tell you it's because it is the sweetest most accurate expression of the love between parent and child and it grabs my heart and squeezes me tighter than any other story. Even though my child is 27 years old to this day he has that book and yes it puts tears in his eyes too. So simply put this book got 5 stars because there aren't a thousand or I would have given it that and more, I love this book.

Now for reason #2 this is Banned Book Week and if you are familiar with this book then you know at one time it was the centre of a bit of controversy. Some people tried to say that this book endorsed incest, to which I say crap. All this book endorses is a man who lost a child and probably more than many others realizes the enduring strength of a parent's love for their child and a child's love for his/her parents. He does this in a simplistic way that makes it comprehensible for children. Because it is after all a children's book. This book was written as a tribute to that child.

So next you might wonder how did this happen that a sweet, charming children's story caused such a controversy well for me it's simple. Somebody, somewhere was looking for the monster under the bed and as I'm sure we can all (or something close to all) agree if you look hard enough for the monster under the bed, you will find it.

I guess my point at the end of all this is that Robert N. Munsch wrote a beautiful story about love and if only one voice had been heard I might not have gotten to share this story with my child and that thought makes me incredibly sad. So please before you decide that someone should or shouldn't have the right to read something; be it a book or a review ask yourself "what am I taking away from the rest of the world? And do I have the right to make that decision for so many other people?"