Kid Lit Is the Answer to Everything

This hillarious Slate article by Jacob Weisberg,* about how impossible it is to comprehend, let alone sing, our national anthem, put me in mind of this episode from one of my favorite children's books:**

Next Miss Binney taught the class the words of a puzzling song about "the dawnzer lee light," which Ramona did not understand because she did not know what a dawnzer was. "Oh, say, can you see by the dawnzer lee light," sang Miss Binney, and Ramona decided that a dawnzer was another word for a lamp.

Once again reinforcing my belief that you can learn everything you could possible want to know about a culture from reading its children's books and childrearing manuals.

*Hat tip to Matt Yglesias.

**The first person who e-mails me the title and author of this book gets a free copy of A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom, which, sadly, is not children's literature but is, according to Amazon, a $49.95 value.

UPDATE: Congrats to Marjorie Cohen, who was the first to correctly identify the source of this excerpt as being Ramona the Pest, by Beverly Cleary.