Children love animals - as do I! I thought this Touch and Lift Peek-a-Who animal book by Scholastic would be fun to share with my one-year-old granddaughter.
On the pig page, children could stroke the pig's soft, pink ear. We read the book a few times, and it was one of my granddaughter's favorites. But one day, I looked at it more closely.
In the following image, look at the difference in the pig's feet.
Here they are more close up.
Those are human toes on the foot at the right on the page.
I grew up on a farm, and my family raised pigs when I was a kid. I'm very familiar with the animals. Those are NOT pig toes. It makes me cringe to even look at them.
This was no accident! I work with graphics on a daily basis. I'm an expert at editing, cloning, and other ways to digitally manipulate or repair images. If that image needed repair, it would have been pretty simple to clone toes from the other foot or from another pig photo. It was much more challenging to do what someone did—put human toes on the pig.
This was done intentionally, but why? What sick person would find it amusing to put human toes on a pig in a book for toddlers?
And, somehow it got past the scrutiny of an editor at Scholastic?
It's obvious this was fully intentional. I know there are more serious evils in our world today, but this makes me very angry.
Speaking of evil, the content of children's books continues to decline. On her website, What's Inside Children's Books, Deborah DeGroff reveals horrible things that are becoming standard fare in books for the young.
*Note that there is very explicit content in her reviews, so her site is not suitable for children.
