Children's books

Why do they make kids books so sad? This weeked I was reminded of just how sad kids books are. My kids were at the library and checked out the movie, "The Bridge to Tarabithia." And let me tell you its sad! Right up there with "Where the Red Fern Grows." As a kid I read both of these books, and failed to comprehend the full extent of the sadness thereof. Now that I have grown up and appreciate more the difference between happiness and sadness I choose not to engage in activities that make me feel these sorts of feelings and make a conscious effort to avoid them. For this reason I have sucessfully avoided authors like John Steinbeck (and Jeremiah, although I don't think there was any capitalization involved in his instance), who seem to relish human misery and in fact capitalize on it! I will not support these harolders of hard times, exultators of undue emotion, and harbingers of heavy hearts! There are not enough hours in the day to languish in lamentations. Just entertain me (there really should be a Transformers novel) or teach me.

Why?

I acknowledge that dogs do funny things, even gross things. I don't usually question why. As an animal science guy I know that the answer is usually simply "They're dogs." For example, over the last few months we have noticed that Lady (my inlaws boxer) will periodically follow Hannah around with her nose firmly attached to Hannah's rear end and thereby acts like an early warning system when Hannah has a poopy diaper. I notched this up to "just being a dog" behaviour.
We didn't think too much of this until today. Yesterday, Hannah had an accident in her underwear (Disney princess underwear). Amber found Hannah, the pooplets and the wet spot onthe carpet and cleaned her up. What she couldn't find were the underwear. We thought that Hannah probably hid them knowing that she should go potty in the potty and sought to get rid of the offending evidence. We discovered our fallacious understanding and underestimation of Lady when the kids, this morning, found her yakking up said soiled undergoods. Thats right she ate the poopy underwear and then threw it up. All I'm left asking is WHY? Then we realized why she was always nosing the trash in the bathroom and why dirty wipes sometimes go missing from the site of a recent diaperectomy. (I wonder if there is a poop rehab?)
Abbey took one look at them and said, "Oh man, we are gonna have to wash those!" To which Amber patiently replied, "No, honey, those are going in the garbage!"