Nancy Drew and Winnie-the-Pooh

I babysat for my three little cousins last night. Mary is at that stage where she is talking constantly, but you only occasionally can understand what she's trying to say. And she's so earnest while she's talking to you... it's really sweet. It reminds me of Boo in Monster's, Inc.

Anyway... after dinner, we watched Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin. Maybe it's a sign that I've been in school for too long, or maybe it is just a sign that the Core program at Whitworth is doing its job... but the whole time we were watching it, I kept thinking things like "Mmm, this scene really illustrates the faith vs. reason debate" or "Wow. You can tell from this song that Pooh is an empiricist, but Rabbit is an authoritarian." Yeah, I know. Nerdy.

Then, later, one of the things the kids wanted me to read to them before bed was a chapter out of a Nancy Drew book. So I read them chapter one of Nancy Drew and the Bungalow Mystery. As I was reading, I came across this sentence: "Just then, Nancy saw a giant wave bearing down on them. She met it head on, hoping to ride the crest, but a deluge of water almost inundated the girls..." I had to stop reading because I was laughing. Deluge!? Inundated!? I'm sure I didn't know what 'deluge' meant until SAT prep tests, and I wasn't sure what inundated meant until now. And the kids probably think that Nancy was hoping to ride a tube of toothpaste. All I have to say is this: people just don't write like this for kids anymore, and it's a sad thing. No wonder they're struggling to bring WASL scores up.

Just so you know...
deluge- a great flood of water; inundation; flood
inundated- to cover with water, especially floodwaters
crest- the foamy top of a wave