So! Is there a sane alternative to UTEP's Childrens' Literature Spring 2006 classes' insistance on such winners as Heather May Have Two Mommies, But With Little Jive'in Willie, It's More Like He Be Have'in Three Daddies ?

Wow! There is? Like what, for instance?

Well, here's one, recently in use in a El Paso ISD elementary school:

The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. Mahwah, New Jersey: Watermill Press, 1980.

Excerpt, telling us about the Monkey People, aka Bandar-log:

P.41

"They were always just going to have a leader, and laws and customs of their own, but they never did, because their memories would not hold over from day to day, and so they compromised things by making up a saying: What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will think later, and that comforted them a great deal."

p. 58 Mowgli is being entertained by the Monkey People:

"He could not help laughing when the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to leave them.

"We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true, they shouted. Now we will tell you all about our most excellent selves.

"Whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they would all shout together: This is true; we all say so!"

So! What better way of giving bright young elementary students a chance to really get used to the all-American University of Texas at El Paso's Rah Rah SPIRIT? While having a lot of fun in the process? And thereby prepare them for what they will be hearing constantly once they show up here on campus in some far off future time?