Tage’s favorite bedtime story of late is a book he checked out from the library last week, Döden i ett nötskal (Death in a Nutshell). It’s about a young boy whose mother is gravely ill. When the boy meets Death on the beach, making his way to the mother’s bedside, the boy attacks Death and somehow manages to stuff him into a nutshell and throw him out to sea.

Chaos ensues, to make a long story short, and the boy finally has no choice but to find the nutshell and release the Reaper. As reward for “honest dealings,” Death leaves the boy’s mother to live to a ripe old age (but, presumably, sets at once to killing all those creatures that refused to die while he was bobbing around the ocean in an acorn).

Now call me overprotective, but I have a really hard time seeing that as a children’s story. I’ve tried every night to talk Tage into reading something else, but he won’t have any of it. He’s morbidly fascinated. I tell you, library day can’t come soon enough for me.