Now I Know Better: Kids Tell Kids About Safety
- Oct 28, 2018
- 2 min read
★★★☆☆
Now I Know Better: Kids Tell Kids About Safety made my reading list thanks to a 2016 episode of This American Life entitled “For Your Reconsideration.” In act three, senior producer Brian Reed tells Ira Glass about the book, and interviews one of the book’s contributors about his own childhood mishap.
Published in 1996, the book contains a selection of stories (curated from more than 700 submissions) in which kids, ages five–19, write about their injuries and share safety tips they learned the hard way. Topics are organized alphabetically, and contain a diversity of dangers, including axes, bees, choking, drowning, escalators, lawn mowers, poison, sledding, walkers, and many more. This was, no doubt, a fascinating—and hopefully “scared straight”—read for kids. For adults without kids like me, this book isn’t much fun unless you do what I did: read the stories aloud to your spouse or significant other (or anyone else willing to indulge you). Taking on the personality of each protagonist and turning each story into a mini monologue made for some pretty good fun.
Lest that sounds insensitive, I will let you know that, with just a couple of exceptions (where things turn out very, very badly), these kids fully recover from their accidents. So go ahead, have some fun, but only if you come across the book on your local library shelf or doctor’s office—and not because you went to the trouble of requesting it through interlibrary loan. In that case, just listen to the sufficiently entertaining TAL segment instead.
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