There Are Moms Way Worse Than You, funny prose with legs

The other day I saw a sticker on a car that said, “Baby up in this witch”, except it didn’t say witch. What an odd sticker, I thought. Would that parent be comfortable with their middle elementary-aged reading the sticker that’s on their car to other kids or adults? Thus, because I’m positing those thoughts one could quickly deduce that I was not a fan of using asterisks in the place of curse words. Mind you, I’m no puritan, I just want to have one conversation with my kids and not have to interpret, or hear them sound like a surly college student before they actually get there.

This was a big trend a couple of years ago and still floats around today amongst lazy copywriters, trendy parents, and marketing rooms now. That’s why when I saw There Are Moms Way Worse Than You, I was skeptical at best. I was expecting an adult book, that was disguised as a children’s book and laden with adult sayings or connotations; which are then taken out of context and applied to parenting or children. Instead, There Are Moms Way Worse Than You, Irrefutable Proof That You Are Indeed a Fantastic Parent is a smart illustrated book that will make parents laugh, is ok for upper elementary school kids, and even teaches them a thing or two.

My wife was just leaving the house when the book arrived. I was exhausted from having taught a day full of fifth-grade students who were doing their best not to listen to me while practicing their surliest eye rolls in preparation for middle school. As she was driving out of the garage I yelled at her, “whenever you feel guilty that you haven’t cleaned the house, sexton beetles raise their kids in a decomposing mouse. I was howling with laughter and it was horribly ironic considering that I’m in charge of cleaning the house. So either, I was trying to make myself feel better about the state of our abode or my wife has a fascination with sexton beetles.

There Are Moms Way Worse Than You is a poetry book that looks at the way some animal moms treat their babies. This isn’t exactly a spoiler alert to those families that have ever had a hamster mom who gave birth, and then didn’t separate them in time. Hint: hamster moms have more of a Hannibal Lector relationship with their offspring and do not need bonding time.

The book starts out with the normal doubts and thoughts that moms have. You’re not good enough, doing enough, spending enough time with them, or enrolling them in toddler STEM classes quick enough. These are normal thoughts and every parent has the fear of delaying their child’s excellence. The book sees into your panicked psyche and invites you to say that it’s OK because there are lots of critters in nature that do things very differently, and much worse than you.

Moms is loaded with very funny illustrations that do just exactly what the anthropomorphic version of them would do. The Alaskan plovers are in an airplane, the quokka mother is throwing her baby at a predator, the eagle mom is staging a fight club between her two babies, and the poison dart frog dad is standing up whilst peeing on the unborn eggs. The stanzas that accompany the art are also very clever, in addition to being disarming to those moms who need a genuine laugh at parenting.

I vaguely remember the very first day I spent alone with our newborn. My wife had returned to work and she arrived at home around 5:00 PM. She was jammed with energy and said, “Sweetie-how was your day, what did you do with the baby”? I was in a daze and truthfully told her “I have no idea what we did today”. This led to a conversation about how I needed to remember what I did with the baby on a daily basis. I think this line of questioning ended after the first Saturday I had the chance to escape for a couple of hours.

There Are Moms Way Worse Than You is a very surprising and funny book. It’s great for those moms of kids who are younger than five. There are only two sketchy words in the book, and they aren’t too bad for those upper elementary kids. They rhyme with miss and pass. The appendix in the back of the book is a slightly deeper, yet still humorous look at the traits and characteristics that make up natures’ bad moms. This is a book that also has a longer enjoyment cycle than you’d expect. Think of it as maternal solace for those new moms, comfort food for the moms-in-doubt, a soft STEM reader for middle school or a toilet book for parents who just need a laugh when they actually get a minute or two to themselves. This is funny stuff that will leave parents and middle school readers grinning as they discover odd and disgusting facts about animal moms and their babies.

There Are Moms Way Worse Than You, Irrefutable Proof That You Are Indeed a Fantastic Parent is by Glenn Boozan with illustrations by Priscilla Witte and available on Workman Publishing.

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