WHY?

I listen to this radio show in the morning on my endless commute to work, the MJ Morning show. And anyway, Mr. MJ was discussing the grossness and absurdity of this children's book called The Fungus that Took Over My School. So, since I work with childrens' books on a daily basis, I think I should tell everyone about one of the books that I think is really scary and a little over the top. Its aptly named: "Why?"On the cover is this cute little frog in a jump suit, sitting peacefully on a rock near some flowers. (By the way, there are no words, it is a Russian picture book and PLEASE go out and find this it will blow your mind. Its in my permanent collection!)So you open the book and there's the frog holding the flower, sitting on the rock when all of a sudden there is an explosion near him and dirt goes flying up and flowers are uprooted. Up from the ground comes this mouse in overalls with an umbrella. The frog smiles kindly, but the mouse is looking the other way. The mouse opens the umbrella and notices the frog. So he throws down the open umbrella and begins to attack and assault this frog... So the frog throws up his arms like: "what the hell, fucker?" and leaves and the mouse takes his flower and sits on his rock. (I'm going page by page here)Next the frog comes back with his friends and they jump that bitch ass mouse. and he gets his rock back. The frogs dance around with flowers and fill up the open umprella with flowers while they jump around. Way off in the distance there is a boot.(This is interesting, right)So it turns out this boot, is really a tank and so it rolls over to the frogs and starts blasting the shit out of them. It is full of mice. They blow lots of shit up and they're wrecking the flowers. The frogs hide in the water under the bridge and as the boot tank rolls over the bridge, the fogs knock it down by breaking the main support beam. So the mice fall in the water, boot and all, and they're all swearing and shit and its getting really messy. A bunch more frogs come in with water resistant battle shoes and start firing at the mice who run away. But then they come back with this weird contraption that looks like a stop sign with strings attatched. Everything is very tense. There are frogs in shoes with guns and mice with some kind of wacky-assed mouse weapon... and all of the sudden the frogs trip this giant land mine controlled by the stop sign. They are totally fucked up. The mice get all of their friends with the giant boot tanks and its on bitch. The surviving frogs go get their friends and their boot tanks and all out war ensues. I am talking serious frog and mouse carnage people. There are explosions, crashes, a frog begs for mercy, its pretty hardcore. The next page is a grim scene of death and destruction. All the land is destroyed, all the vehicles are destroyed and the frogs and mice are destroyed. There is no more rock to sit on. The last spread shows the two originals, mouse and frog. The frog holds the mouses tattered and broken umbrella and doesn't look at the mouse who sits farther away holding the frog's dead flower.Now THAT is what I call a children's book. Seriously check this book out. Its calledWhy? and its by Nikolai Popov