Celebrities Teaching Kids To Read

Halloween by Jerry Seinfeld Michiko Kakutani looks at various celebrity chidren's book authors (some Madonna, some Lynne Cheney, even Keith Hernandez) and finds many of them, with their "very special messages," uninspiring. However, the one she takes to task is Jerry Seinfeld for his book, Halloween:

"Jerry Seinfeld's Halloween has an even more offensive message: greed is good and rudeness is funny. His hero, an obnoxious brat, spurns some of the trick-or-treat candy he has received with snarky disdain: 'Do me a favor, you keep that one,' he tells an old woman who has given him an orange marshmallow treat. 'We've got all the doorstops we need already, thank you very much. We're going for NAME CANDY ONLY this year.'"

We never opened up the book because we weren't sure about the Little Jerry on the cover, but now Gothamist is fantasizing about a Little Larry David book. Like a tiny bald, grey-haired beak nosed boy running around being a brat.

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By Jen Chung in Arts & Entertainment on October 23, 2003 9:36 AM

Comments [rss]

Jen

That's the thing about stand up - you work a lot of material but only some of it sticks... I think that's the case with many comics. Sort of the 'big gun' material.

rachelleb

yeh.. actually, one of the biggest complaints people had about Im Telling You For The Last Time was that it was mostly compiled of previous stuff.. from previous tours and from the intros of the old Seinfeld shows. But the kids book is nearly identical in it's entirety to the Halloween bit in ITYFTLT.

Jen

I saw Jerry do stand-up in 1992, during the early days of Seinfeld, and I'm pretty sure he did some Halloween stuff then, like how it's annoying that you have to wear a coat over your costume when you trick or treat. Along with the socks in the laundry stuff and if you need laundry detergent to get blood out of your clothes, maybe laundy isn't your biggest problem.

rachelleb

The story in this book was first a bit from his "I'm Telling You For The Last Time" tour/cd/dvd. It was PGed down (not that it was very offensive in the first place) and made into a children's book (with a cd in the back) in 2002.

The little Jerry illustrated throughout IS somewhat disturbing.