Good day everyone, thanks for stopping by.  Wondering why I started on blogging about the Tour on Day #2 instead of Day #1? Well, I chalk that up to the tour starting right after the holiday. My first stop posted late but I did share it on social media. In case you missed it, here is the link for yesterday’s stop, a spotlight courtesy of  Book Zone. 

Today’s schedule was supposed to be quite heavy with two reviews, an excerpt, and a guest post.  I say supposed to be because at the time of writing this only one of the reviews and the excerpt has posted. So why aren’t I waiting for them to post before writing my blog post for the day? Because I have become aware of an issue that cannot and will not be ignored. I have a troll.

For those of you who don’t know what that is let me explain. The Wikipedia definition is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement. However, most others also believe the definition includes spreading lies and other such rumors. And just my luck, mine happens to fancy herself a reviewer.

She goes by the name of Misty and has been a reviewer in the last two Children’s book tours for Back To Basic Publishing books that specifically listed me in some capacity. The first time, it was for The Alligator and the Ducklings tour. In that review, she claimed she wouldn’t read it or recommend it to children because it was violent. 

I have been told that most of my books are too long for children. And a time or two Baby Jaimie has been called out for violence over a rather small incident (Baby Jaimie gets punched). These comments and the comments in the blogger listed above played a part in the planning process for The Lil’ Defenders. It took me months to come up with a plot involving superheroes where nobody gets hit but I did it. And what does this blogger have to say about it? You can read for yourself; if you are lucky enough to have Superman vision and can read the black font against the brown background. Books for Bookz

For those of you who can’t read it (I had to highlight the text as if I was going to copy and paste in order to see it), let me break it down for you.

1. I felt that the book was extremely rushed and the "bad guys" were a joke. The "bad guys" were random thugs littering in a park who the Lil' Defenders beat up. I understand that this is a kid's book, but the Bad Guys should have been introduced sooner and been more bad. For instance the thugs could have been littering while they were robbing kids of their lunch money and maybe roughing them up a little bit.

First of all, bad guys are a joke. They are intended to be a bunch of teenagers who are trying to come off as big and bad but really their level of thuggery is pathetic at best. As for the lack of kids getting roughed up, if I added them, she would have called me out for that as well.

2. I found the illustrations to be sub-par for the adults. The pictures of the kids were okay, but the adults looked rather ugly in the book.

This is such a nonsensical statement, which is consistent with Wikipedia’s definition of an Internet Troll, that I don’t even know how to begin refuting it. I would certainly hope someone who claims to have a college education and works with kids would know better than to use words like ugly when referring to people’s looks. Considering the illustrations were the illustrator’s rendering of pictures of real people, this blogger basically just did what reasonable adults teach children not to do, point and pass judgement on people based on their looks. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, anyone who has their children in this person’s afterschool program should remove them immediately. This is definitely not the influence we want on the next generation.

As I mentioned, a second stop has also posted today. It is an excerpt courtesy of What Is That Book About. 

Want to hear that excerpt being read? Check out the Lil’ Defenders book trailer. Also on Vimeo.

I will include the other two posts, if they post, on tomorrow’s post. If you’d like to follow the tour on your own you may do so by visiting the WorldWind Book Tour’s Lil’ Defenders’ page. 

Til we meet again, Happy Reading!