Children's literature aimed at young children poses a unique challenge for an individual attempting to analyze a work of fiction. Normally, the student of fiction can quote from the text with a reasonable expectation that the attitude of the text can be conveyed to the reader of the essay. Simply by reading the selected, quoted passage the reader of the essay ought to get a sense of the book. However, when discussing a picture book, conveying the tone of a work becomes more difficult because the illustrations and the words are inexorably linked. Often, to a very young or pre-literate child reading the book, the pictures are even more important than the words.

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (featuring "Little Red Running Shorts" as one of its tales) was written by Jon Sciezka and illustrated by Lance Smith. It is an interesting example of this phenomenon...
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