It’s one streetwise fairy tale:
This is the drug known as cocaine,
made from the Plants that people can’t eat,
raised by the Farmers who work in the heat
and fear the Soldiers who guard the Man
who lives in the House that crack built.
Maybe you wouldn’t read this to your child, but then again, maybe you should. Clark Taylor thinks you should.
Taylor adapted the classic rhyming fairy tale, The House That Jack Built, and retitled it The House That Crack Built (Chronicle Books, $5.95).
The resulting cautionary tale, accompanied by artist Jan Thompson Dick’s simple but powerful illustrations, takes readers into the hazardous world of crack cocaine.
“The house that crack built” is a mansion inhabited by a man who smuggles cocaine and is guarded by soldiers.
The coke finds its way from growing fields to the “street of a town in pain” that is ruled by a gang. Among the town’s crack-addicted residents is a young mother who buys the drug for herself instead of food for her baby.
“I tend to keep notebooks and jot down ideas … that turned into a poem that turned into a book,” Taylor said about the book, his first. The idea for the book came from Taylor’s experiences with a friend whose life was destroyed by cocaine, and from newspaper articles he read about the drug.
Taylor, who has been a stand-up comedian for nine years, doesn’t talk about drugs in his routines. He does, though, “tell socially relevant stories.”
He thought of the book as an educational tool for elementary and middle schools. But it has received a broader response, he said.
It is required reading for teens enrolled in a drug-addiction treatment program in Los Angeles. And it contains a list of drug education and rehabilitation organizations.
The publisher’s proceeds from sales of the book will be donated to drug education, prevention and rehabilitation programs for children.
