Parents know the drill: watch your language, hide your phone, don’t say anything you don’t want repeated at school. Children are always listening. Usually that means an ill-timed curse word or a disturbingly accurate impression of a work call. In one case, it led to a 6-year-old girl going rogue and writing a fully illustrated book about drinking.
Over the holidays, Scout Haskel, a kindergartner in Montclair, New Jersey, handed her family a handmade tale — complete with a cover, drawings and a moral to the story —about a child whose encounter with red wine does not end well.
“We were visiting my parents, and every night my mom and I have a glass of wine and gossip,” Bethany Hall, Scout’s mother, tells TODAY.com. “She’d been off on her own with a bunch of cousins, running around, asking for spelling help here and there. Then she just presented it to us. We were on the floor laughing.”
The humor runs in the family. Hall and her husband, Keith Haskel, are both comedy writers and producers.
Hall later shared the story on Instagram, posting a video of herself sitting in a chair and reading Scout’s book, titled “The Kid Who Drank Wine,” aloud in a librarian-at-story-hour style.
“Her name was Scout,” Hall begins. “Her mom said no drinking wine and she didn’t listen. They went to a birthday party and no kids are allowed to drink wine but she did. Out to dinner she drunk wine.”
Then, on the final page, Scout delivers the reckoning herself.
“And she got DRUNK,” Hall continues, before pausing. “I don’t feel good, mommy.”
The comments quickly took on a life of their own. Viewers praised the book’s structure as much as its subject matter, with one noting, “It had a beginning, middle and end. The theme stayed present. I think she’d sell well.” Others were quicker to jump ahead in Scout’s career. “I smell a Pulitzer,” one commenter wrote. Several demanded a sequel.
“I am pleased to inform you the next day, she immediately wrote “'The Kid Who Drank Coffee!'” Hall says.
