06 October 2009

Prepositional objection

What is with the weirdly garbled prepositional and phrasal verbs in children's books? Don Freeman (Corduroy dude) is the worst offender I've noticed, but I'd say it's pretty common throughout kid lit. It sounds unnatural and serves no linguistic purpose. Its overuse renders it aesthetically impotent, and it teaches kids to write in a similarly affected voice. Drives me nuts.

Over she tabbed to Publish Post! Up, up, up she rose from her chair! Toward the freezer she lumbered, slowly, slowly. Out she took the ice cream and into her 25 week old wombling she shoveled it!

3 comments:

Untamed Shrew said...

"Its overuse renders it aesthetically impotent..." Yup. AKA "semantic satiation." Like the husband who says "I love you" 80 times a day.

But please, continue your story. I was just getting into it. "Down, down, drizzled the caramel and hot fudge...."

Sir Cuthbert said...

Possible explataions:

1. It's a device to keep children interested by making the story sound more exciting than it really is.

2. They all secretly want to be Yoda.

lisa said...

haha -
I'm such a doof.
I read wom-bling. Not womb-ling.
It made me picture a big cave with waves of ice cream lapping at it.

Hmmm....