I used to love scratch-n-sniff when I was little. I remember one about a little bear at Christmas and I could smell his hot chocolate, oranges, and pine trees. Well, that was then and this is now. My book about the little bear was really delightful. This new scratch-n-sniff book will not be really delightful. But it will be real and should be manufactured in bulk and distributed freely to all children that they may get an olfactory sense of what the future holds. In "The Future Stinks" children can scatch and sniff smells of garbage, factory farms, sewage effluent, factory farms, and red tide (complete with the burning sensation). They can also sniff the body odor of overpopulation and the rotten flesh of decomposing whales--dead from toxic bioaccumulation. Any publishers out there?
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Heh. This reminds me of an April Fool trick that my fourth grade teacher played on our class. He told us that we were going to be watching a film that day in a new format - Smell-o-vision (or something like that), where not only would we see the action, but we'd be able to smell things just as if we were there.
Then he told us that the film we would be watching was about the sewer system.
This sounds a bit like making that April Fool a reality.
Also, my nine-year-old will probably love this.
This is actually a great idea - smell is such a primitive, visceral sense, it affects emotions quite directly.
Huh. Let's give our kids the worst picture of the future we can imagine...
I mean, we want to give kids a sense of what there is to enjoy and protect and look forward to, right?
Erik, Orion Grassroots Network
Just a little bit of morbid humor. If Stephen Colbert can read Ayn Rand to children before bedtime, I see no reason why we shouldn't give children a turd in the tide to scratch and sniff...
Ah, I didn't notice it was your own artwork - I thought the book was already published by someone.
I usually hide out on April Fools Day, if you were wondering...
Erik
That's awesome you thought it was real! That means it really has potential! I can just see parents banning it before mealtimes...
I had that Christmas scratch-n-sniff book too. I think my mom still has it.
Jennifer, it is a great idea! As a matter of fact, you should have two books in one, with two covers. One side (half of the book) is about the world and the smells kids love (the book you had when you were little); the other half is about the stinky future. Let's kids decide what side they prefer/want...
I came across your blog when I was doing a Google search for the scratch and sniff Christmas book that you mentioned! I LOVED that book, and I recently found it again, and after 20-odd years, it still smells exactly the same!
I like the idea about the Future Stinks, too!