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Mac's choice: A story about choices and drug use
Mac's Choice is a unique and sensitive story written for children ages 6 and up. It prepares young children to deal with the issues surrounding drug use.
40 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 25, 2018
1.5 stars -- I saw MAC’S CHOICE advertised years ago in a catalog of classroom teaching materials, and it looked so bizarre I knew I’d have to check it out eventually.
This book is a strange little relic of the “Just Say No”/DARE era. It is the story of Mac, a monarch butterfly caterpillar who, after days of innocent fun in the meadow, runs into a devious bug called “Roach” (ha) who convinces him to eat some marijuana leaves. Fitting in with the logic of such materials, Mac is in short order addicted to crack. His “friends” (actually his brother and sister, as they all came from the same batch of eggs) repeatedly warn him that drugs are bad, mmkay, but Mac just blows them off. When all of the caterpillars transform into butterflies, Mac emerges from his chrysalis shockingly damaged and misshapen. The book ends with the deformed, flightless Mac laying on the ground crying as the other butterflies fly away.
Like much anti-drug content of this era, the idea is to be unsettling to the youthful audience, and MAC’S CHOICE certainly succeeds in this respect. The illustrations are very cutesy, cloyingly so, which makes it pretty strange to say the least when we see Mac repeatedly injure himself—there are scenes of the caterpillar with multiple broken legs, eyes swollen shut, etc. The author seems to want to impart some scientific facts about monarchs within this fantasy story as well, and there is some rather jarring content describing the caterpillars’ skin splitting as they make their cocoons. The first word that came to mind when reading the final page as Mac cries, friendless, alone and broken, was “cruel.” I tried to imagine how I might have reacted to this story when I was its target audience, and as I hated to see anyone injured in stories, I don’t think I would have liked it at all.
From an adult point of view, material such as this is highly manipulative. Few people think children should use drugs, of course, and few children even have an interest in using them. At the same time, to maintain that trying cannabis will invariably lead to crack addiction and physical ruin is as patently ridiculous as claiming that having a glass of wine at dinner is a straight shot to dying in a gutter of alcoholism. It would be nice to have materials that emphasize that certain things are adult choices that should not be engaged in by minors, but this kind of overwrought moralizing will swiftly be rejected by kids as soon as they grow old enough to think critically.
This book is a strange little relic of the “Just Say No”/DARE era. It is the story of Mac, a monarch butterfly caterpillar who, after days of innocent fun in the meadow, runs into a devious bug called “Roach” (ha) who convinces him to eat some marijuana leaves. Fitting in with the logic of such materials, Mac is in short order addicted to crack. His “friends” (actually his brother and sister, as they all came from the same batch of eggs) repeatedly warn him that drugs are bad, mmkay, but Mac just blows them off. When all of the caterpillars transform into butterflies, Mac emerges from his chrysalis shockingly damaged and misshapen. The book ends with the deformed, flightless Mac laying on the ground crying as the other butterflies fly away.
Like much anti-drug content of this era, the idea is to be unsettling to the youthful audience, and MAC’S CHOICE certainly succeeds in this respect. The illustrations are very cutesy, cloyingly so, which makes it pretty strange to say the least when we see Mac repeatedly injure himself—there are scenes of the caterpillar with multiple broken legs, eyes swollen shut, etc. The author seems to want to impart some scientific facts about monarchs within this fantasy story as well, and there is some rather jarring content describing the caterpillars’ skin splitting as they make their cocoons. The first word that came to mind when reading the final page as Mac cries, friendless, alone and broken, was “cruel.” I tried to imagine how I might have reacted to this story when I was its target audience, and as I hated to see anyone injured in stories, I don’t think I would have liked it at all.
From an adult point of view, material such as this is highly manipulative. Few people think children should use drugs, of course, and few children even have an interest in using them. At the same time, to maintain that trying cannabis will invariably lead to crack addiction and physical ruin is as patently ridiculous as claiming that having a glass of wine at dinner is a straight shot to dying in a gutter of alcoholism. It would be nice to have materials that emphasize that certain things are adult choices that should not be engaged in by minors, but this kind of overwrought moralizing will swiftly be rejected by kids as soon as they grow old enough to think critically.
February 16, 2024
was read this in third grade i think about every night before i fall asleep
September 22, 2026
I read this book in health class when I was only 5. I have never EVER forgotten this book, it traumatized me and all the other kids in the class and after that when I moved to the next grade they stopped using it as the curriculum for the school. That was 2011??? I believe. The elementary school I went to which I wish not to bring up... was often very uncaring in these situations unless more than one complaint about how they were teaching kids was sent. I had a disability and the teachers were very cruel, my health teacher in this class where she had us read this book? She didn't even care nor comfort us besides asking if we would ever do drugs? We all only answered in cries and sobs. Since that day? I never did any drugs, smoking, alcohol, etc.
February 28, 2023
I was read this book back in the third grade. I am 24 years old now and I am still very traumatized by this awful book. please talk to your children about drugs and the way it could affect their lives in an honest conversation not by reading them this book that is so cruel that still unsettles me to this day.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews