Should kids be protected from violent images in the books they read? Hard to tell from my POV. My instinct is to over-protect, but then I remember my own youth and think of what I read and drew. I don’t know that from age 5 to 19 I ever drew anything that didn’t have blood and/or entrails in it. And look how I turned out. Oh, wait. Protect the kids. Recently ‘Ninja Boy showed me a picture and said, “I’m sorry, Dad, but this may disturb you. See these guys with x’s for eyes? They’re dead.” He looked at me with wide significant eyes as though waiting for me to throw my hands to my face and run away in terror. What I wanted to say was, “That’s cause someone carved x’s into their faces,” but I needed him to sleep that night.

There have been many calls to protect the young from violent images, but it’s not often the opposite case is argued, that there aren’t enough aggressive pictures in children’s books.

But award-winning children’s author Ted Dewan is conscientiously putting scenes of mayhem and destruction into his latest book, not drawn by an adult but by the children themselves.

Children, particularly boys, often produce violent images in their drawings, he says. But when it comes to children’s books, this becomes a taboo. They’re often fluffy and fleecy, but there’s rarely room in the children’s section for the scenes of slaughter that many boys like to draw.