Are the Casey Grimes Books Woke?

No, they are not. I am allergic to wokeness. And that is an understatement.

If you arrived here from Facebook, hello and welcome. FB penalizes accounts that discuss the woke agenda—I know from experience. Since I don’t like losing money, we’ll talk about it here instead.

You aren’t looking for long definitions, so we’ll define wokeness as a species of Marxism. For example, if the Marxist family tree is Creep, Arctic Creep could be the woke species. Or Whining Creep, or Outraged Creep, whatever.

Like old-school Marxists, wokeies focus on sorting people into groups of oppressor and oppressed. Originally, as you may know, the distinctions were economical. Now the sorting is race and gender-based. If you are truly an oppressed person—which is something we know from history happens all too often—this is a terrible thing. But for modern wokies, living in affluent America, grabbing the "oppressed" label is a good thing. Your extra-special status entitles you to change society by whatever means you like.

Nothing is off limits. Lucky you.

At a deep level, the woke impulse echoes Cain’s talk with God after he murders his brother, Abel. If you’ve ever read the story in the Bible, you may remember Cain doesn’t break down in tears and beg for mercy. Instead, he lashes out at God.

“My jealousy isn’t the problem. The system is broken, not me.”

Today's wokeness runs on the same fuel. “I’m offended. Life’s not fair. I’m oppressed. I’m a victim. The system is broken, not me…so whatever I might do to change the world is ok.”

Since I'm writing on my own blog and can't be censored (hopefully), I may as well tell you: The things woke people say remind me of stupid games my kids play. “She touched me. He looked at me in a bad way. She called me a muffin.” In my family, if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. You don’t get rewarded for having skin like cellophane and the self-importance of a chicken.

But remember. When everything around you is broken—but not you, never you—everyone else is the problem. For wokeies today, that means they get to tell kids that girls can be boys and boys can be girls and some skin colors are better than others. And if anyone disagrees, the wokeies get to call them names and send mobs to cancel them.

Because if you say the system is pervasively and systematically broken—not you, remember, never you—anything you do to break the system is ok. Anything.

That's why we have politicians and activists saying, “Children belong to everyone.” That's why we’ve got doctors performing irreversible surgeries on minors. That's why we’ve got Big Kidlit mandating sexual content in books and hoping parents don’t notice.

In case you haven't guessed, I despise this stuff. I don't find it mildly disgusting. I hate it. If it was up to me, I'd be handing out lifetime jail sentences right and left. I have a bunch of kids of my own and I can’t stand bullies. I can't stand cowards. I can't stand people who run from a fair fight. People who manipulate, coerce and butcher children deserve the worst penalties society can dish out.

Maybe you got a longer reply than you were expecting. But to answer the question that brought you here, the Casey Grimes books are not woke. They never will be. That’s because I’m not woke and never will be. I’m not even awake. Like anyone who loves the good, the true and the beautiful, I’m still dreaming. This is why the Casey Grimes stories champion courage, tenacity and hope. Why they contain magic and adventure and the scariness of fighting monsters. Big Kidlit has been circulating woke memos for years, but I threw mine in the trash. I don't care if this kind of story is supposed to be extinct.

I'm gonna keep writing kids' books that really are written for kids.