Book, 50 cents

My daughters are experienced theatre-goers on account of the fact we have friends who are performers and their father writes plays. But you wouldn’t know this about the girls to look at them. So when we turn up to yet another show that has swearing and sexual references in it, an organiser will invariably accost us in the foyer with a word of warning.

The sexual references tend to fly over the girls’ heads: they might as well be watching monkeys in a zoo. As for the swearing, well… Between fringe theatre, contemporary singer-songwriters and their parents filling in the blanks, my girls are actually well-acquiainted with just about every swear word under the sun. But that doesn't mean they swear. On the contrary, when my seven-year-old spied this book in an op shop she shook her head laughing and said, “Why would anyone want to read about bad girls?"