Kids Behaving Badly—No Hugging, No LearningLike this list

12 items

• The Evil Princess Vs. the Brave Knight

  Holm, Jennifer L.

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  Maybe it's because of their unusual home situation—they live alone in a castle with only a "magic mirror" to parent them—but these children just . . . don't play well together.

• The Evil Princess Vs. the Brave Knight Make Good Choices?

  Holm, Jennifer L.

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  The title implies a question. The answer is no, they do not.

• The Evil Princess Vs. the Brave Knight Take Turns

  Holm, Jennifer L.

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  Do they, though?

• Tom

  DePaola, Tomie, 1934-

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  You know how you love it when your kids spend time with grandpa, but you also kind of dread them spending time with grandpa? Because grandpa's ideas of acceptable behavior are a little "old-school"? This is that grandpa.

• Madeline

  Bemelmans, Ludwig, 1898-1962

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  They say that well-behaved women seldom make history. Case in point: if Madeline had been a perfect, role-model type of girl, would we still be reading about her 80-plus years later? No, we would not.

• Madeline and the Bad Hat

  Bemelmans, Ludwig, 1898-1962

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  If you thought Madeline was a little "spirited," wait til you see what Pepito gets up to. He's so ill-behaved, Madeline has to straighten him out!

• Yotsuba &! 11

  Azuma, Kiyohiko

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  Yotsuba is one of the most realistic child characters I've come across in decades, which means she's also hilarious. She can swing from sweet and adorable to bratty to rage-filled in a few manga panels, or she can just inexplicably throw a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Where the Wild Things Are

  Sendak, Maurice

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  Of the books in this list, this one is alone in being *about* behaving badly—and the loneliness of a child whose wild antics exile him, physically, to his room, but emotionally, to a society of monsters, which feels good for a while, but…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Mistakes Were Made

  Pastis, Stephan

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  Timmy Failure is like a premium-TV series anti-hero, but for kids. He's weird. He's not nice. He's monomaniacal and delusional, and everything he does goes extravagantly wrong. But somehow, you root for him, if only because, as far as…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

  Blume, Judy

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  The frustration of an older sibling who has internalized the rules of good behavior facing the brazen misbehavior of a toddler, and his parents' inexplicable indulgence of that misbehavior, is a special kind of torture. You're expected to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Ramona the Pest

  Cleary, Beverly

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  Central to the experience of being a child is being a chaos agent. Acting on impulse, desire, and imagination all the time is how you figure out what's possible. It's a factory-installed learning tool. But it pits you against everyone…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Calvin and Hobbes

  Watterson, Bill

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  Calvin and Hobbes is like a lenticular image—those pictures that change from one thing to another when you shift your perspective. From one angle, it's a chronicle of a wonderful childhood friendship; from another, it's a portrait of one…Read moreRead more of this annotation