Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?
OK. OK. I know I’m new around here (like that means anything – it’s all new), and I know coming right out of the chute and reviewing a goddamn children’s book isn’t exactly going to make me the Fonz around the favoritethingEVER lunch table, but I guess I don’t care. I guess I’m willing to risk it. When inspiration strikes, even if it comes in the form of something as seemingly sappy as a gushing children’s book review, I say run with it.
First things first: Most children’s books are garbage. Especially NEW children’s books; or, perhaps, CONTEMPORARY children’s books for the advanced little bedwetters out there. It’s like any writer willing to bite the bullet and admit their prose is probably best ingested by a three year old can get into the business. If there was an online college specializing in turning out children’s book writers, the tag line might be: “If pride’s not an issue, you too can write children’s books!”
Oh, yeah! And there would definitely have to be something about being politically correct in there too. That’s the other thing. If you’re a contemporary children’s book writer there’s no funny business allowed. At least, not until you’ve covered all your ethnicity bases, removed anything that could be deemed offensive by any constituency, and somehow worked in a healthy snack. Just get creative!
This brings me to Shel Silverstein’s Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?, one of my favorite children’s books ever!
If you’ve sought out actual paragraphs of thought on this website (devoid of all text-message shorthand), as opposed to YouTube bum fights or porn from the Czech Republic, chances are you still hold some reverence for the written word. Chances are equally high your reverence for the written word was influenced by the great Shel Silverstein. He’s famous for Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic – books of wicked poetry that have stood the test of time. But for my money, and for my three-year-old at bedtime, Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros? has everything I’m looking for.
Originally published in 1964, the book’s illustrations are simple, and there’s not a healthy snack in the entire thing. This alone puts Cheap Rhinoceros ahead of the pack. It came from a time before healthy snacks were so damn important (because 90 percent of children weren’t little sacks of high fructose corn syrup), and it came from a time before 3D, Tim Burton-inspired imagery and Skippyjon Jones.
But it’s more than that. The book opens with a simple premise: Who wants a cheap rhinoceros? Who DOES want a cheap rhinoceros? It’s a good question.
You might – if you knew all the great things a cheap rhinoceros can do, as Silverstein’s classic spends the rest of its well-metered pages telling you about (in rhyme capable of putting a three-year-old to sleep that never approaches overbearing).
For instance, a cheap rhinoceros – or, in particular, the cheap rhinoceros for sale in Silverstein’s world of pointy-nosed little kids with messed up hair – can be a lot of things, like be a back scratcher, or a coat hanger, or a “very lovely lamp.” It can also eat bad report cards before your parents see them, and help you intimidate your dad into extra allowance. Really, it seems very useful, this cheap rhinoceros. Kind of makes you wonder why it’s so cheap?
Well, there are a few things. Silverstein never hides the rhinoceros’ limitations: it can’t open doors well, it sometimes steps on peoples’ feet, and, apparently, it isn’t fond of taking baths. These aren’t criminal offenses, certainly, but this cheap rhinoceros seems to be flawed just like you or me.
This all sounds very cute, I know – but there are a couple very important things about this cheap rhinoceros you should know – things that move Silverstein’s book into the favoritethingEVER realm.
He’ll open “soda cans” for your uncle in the book – with “your uncle” depicted as a slovenly gent in a lazy boy with two empty “soda cans” strewn at his feet. This is awesome. Any adult reading this book with half a brain can see this rhinoceros is an enabler, and EVERYONE needs a good enabler. To this life lesson immortalized in a children’s book is very gratifying.
Even better, and I quote:
“(H)e is great for not letting your mother hit you when you haven’t really done anything bad.”
How awesome is THAT?
Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros? is one of my favorite things EVER!
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
We are known for being edgy and tough. And our love of shark fighting! You know, like when the Jets and the Sharks have a dance off in West Side Story? That shizz is epic, yo. Now give me milk money, kid! (Also, we totally have room for a cheap rhino in the yard behind our apartment. We too have “soda cans” to open.)
It is true that a cheap rhino could keep me from beating my children, if I were to have children — which I don’t, thank goodness.
But a cheap hippo would probably do the job even scarier.
I am only just reading this now, but I have to say, you can be the Fonz at my lunch table anytime.