Kids suck at most things. Whether it’s sports, video games,
cooking, playing music, or performing quadruple bypass surgery, children are
pretty incompetent at almost everything. In particular, kids are shitty
artists, and New York Times bestselling
author Maddox proves it in his anthology of horrible children’s drawings, I Am Better Than Your Kids.
I miraculously got hooked up with a free copy in exchange
for a Campus Basement review, and I honestly laughed out loud through all of
its 300-something pages of crappy kids’ artwork. Maddox takes the liberty to
write brief reviews of each drawing and grade them on a scale from F+ to F-,
since they all suck.
In case this sounds vaguely familiar, Maddox’s
art reviews made their first appearance on his website in 2002 and went viral
the old way ““ through email forwards. And to think at that time, Mark
Zuckerberg was just a little prick (Well, he still is, but he wasn’t as rich
and was probably even more socially awkward). Anyway, here’s an old favorite to
give you a basic idea of Maddox’s insightful genius:
In I Am Better Than
Your Kids, Maddox categories each piece of art into chapters such as
“Special Cars From Special Kids,” “Unintentional Hitler,” “Shitty Inventions,”
and “Animals Fucking.” An old drawing of mine that I submitted a while back
even made it into the chapter titled “Bowls To Throw Up In,” in which I
(“William”) depicted myself vomiting into a bowl while lying in bed. (Spoiler
alert: Maddox gave me an F. A humbling experience. At least I hit the book’s
average grade.)
Maddox also grades children’s miserable test answers,
papers, jokes, and apology notes to teachers for misbehaving. It’s hard to
argue against any of his reviews; the spelling, grammar, and artistry is all
pretty terrible, and Maddox points it out with a unique candor and cleverness.
The book has tons of ugly colors and the reviews are short, sweet, and funny, so even the most ADD-ridden Facebook addict should be able to pound
through the whole thing in one or two sittings. I’d recommend putting it on the
coffee table so you can share it with your friends, or offend people who aren’t
your friends. It’ll make you think twice about saying “good job!” next time
some random kid shows you a shitty drawing of a robot or a tree with wheels.
