{"id":78882,"date":"2014-10-31T18:21:14","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T22:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=78882"},"modified":"2014-10-31T18:21:14","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T22:21:14","slug":"if-i-had-a-ribbon-bow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/31\/if-i-had-a-ribbon-bow\/","title":{"rendered":"If I Had a Ribbon Bow"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_78909\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/in-a-dark-dark-room01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78909\" class=\"wp-image-78909\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/in-a-dark-dark-room01.jpg\" alt=\"In a Dark Dark Room01\" width=\"600\" height=\"486\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/in-a-dark-dark-room01.jpg 992w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/in-a-dark-dark-room01-300x243.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-78909\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the cover of <i>In a Dark, Dark Room<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As we all know, the world divides, evenly or otherwise, between those of us who grew up reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781559942331?aff=theparisreview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>In a Dark, Dark Room<\/em><\/a> and those who did not. Those of us who have read it (I got my copy at one of those sponsored school book sales, noteworthy for its bake sale and wealth of Klutz-brand books, one of which came with a Koosh ball) will never look at a green ribbon the same way again.<\/p>\n<p>Spoiler alert for \u201cThe Green Ribbon\u201d: Girl has green ribbon around her neck. Grows up, marries, ages, dies. Ribbon is untied, head falls off. It is a perfect scary kid\u2019s story: simple, terrifying, pleasantly idiotic. Certainly, I didn\u2019t feel it to be in any conflict with the basic facts of anatomy. Certainly not doll anatomy. In Alvin\u00a0Schwartz\u2019s 1984 <em>I Can Read!<\/em> version, the girl\u2014Jenny\u2014looks sort of like Laura Nyro and rocks a really good look.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If I have a beef with most modern fright-fests, it\u2019s that they\u2019re too complicated: over-plotted, spilling over with various malignancies and kinds of dark magic. \u201cThe Green Ribbon\u201d is an antidote to this. Unlike, say, the Koosh ball, it has aged well. After its fashion, it is the perfect scary story. But you don\u2019t have to take my word for it!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we all know, the world divides, evenly or otherwise, between those of us who grew up reading In a Dark, Dark Room and those who did not. Those of us who have read it (I got my copy at one of those sponsored school book sales, noteworthy for its bake sale and wealth of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[17,12555,1146,14063,15884,15885,15867],"class_list":["post-78882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-books","tag-childrens-literature","tag-halloween","tag-heads","tag-in-a-dark-dark-room","tag-ribbons","tag-scary-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sadie Stein on \u201cIn a Dark, Dark Room\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An appreciation by Sadie Stein on the Alvin Schwartz classic.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/31\/if-i-had-a-ribbon-bow\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If I Had a Ribbon Bow by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 31, 2014 \u2013 As we all know, the world divides, evenly or otherwise, between those of us who grew up reading In a Dark, Dark Room and those who did not. 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