Concerning & Potentially Concerning Content

There is a lot of concerning content packed into a very short, graphical format. Clementine deceives her mom, pretending to go to school, but leaving for an adventure instead. She says her plan is to run away to her aunt’s home and not go back (with the main motivation being avoiding school). Another student is asked by her teacher if she knows where the missing students are (those who left on the ‘adventure’). She bold face lies, saying they are sick, even describing in some detail the (fake) stomach bug results. We see an illustration of her leaving saying, “Ha, ha, suckers!”. Later in the story her dad confronts her about this and actually commends her for her “improv skills”. When discussing why they went on the ‘adventure’ one child says “I’m done with school” and another “peer pressure”. Later Clementine is told, “You can’t tell your mom Clementine. We’ll be grounded forever”. This type of thing goes throughout. There are all types of random rude comments and behavior sprinkled in (“what do you want?”, “Just read the question, you butt”). Even when we see two moms come on the scene they are both shown as super rude, passive aggressive and angry, with no explanation why. In fact, one of them is shown cursing, with young readers seeing “#!@$_!” to indicate the bad word(s). We then see a young child say, “Ooh! You said a bad word!”, but she is sadly smiling with hands in the air as if she is celebrating. Then one of the moms says their daughters won’t be seeing each other any more, to which the other replies, “Good luck telling her that”. Sadly a friend is (super confusingly) referred to as “their” for their “pronouns” multiple times. Other items to be aware of: A character says, “Your mom sounds like she is really strict” to which the reply comes, “You have no idea”. On the other end young readers read the following, “Aunt Marne’s house is he best. You can basically do whatever you want”. When arriving home a child is asked, “How was it?” to which the reply comes “Dumb”. Illustrations show several very angry, almost creepy looks (when frustrated) Half-jokingly “curses” another girl, remarking “maybe my witch aunt taught me”. A child remarks, “I thought having one sibling was bad enough”. A giant says, “I tasted of the gods”. The term “jerk” is used.