I urge other reviewers to ease up on this book and to recognize that the "stalking" it depicts clearly does not represent literal stalking. The narrative argues that the love that we extend to our children lives on in the love that they extend to theirs. The mother enters her son's room not as a literal reflection of her climbing through his window, but as a metaphorical reflection of the ways in which the affection that she extended to him as a child do not differ, at least not philosophically, from the affection that she continues to extend to him as an adult. "Mothers can continue to reach out to and comfort their children," the narrative tells us. I can't think of a more beautiful or touching message about the importance and intransigence of unconditional maternalistic (and later, paternalistic) love. I also applaud Munsch for the particular catharsis that his story offers to mothers as they and their children grow older and anxieties about the rifts that often grow between parents and their aging children become increasingly tangible.

The cynicism of the readership decrying this book strikes me as offensively shallow and ignorant, and reflects the horrendous inability of our modern readership to dive beneath the surface of a text. When applied to literary pieces like the Bible, the Qua-ran, and the United States Constitution, this kind of reductionist reading gets us fundamentalist evangelism, radical Islam and islamophobia, constitutional literalism and its appendant horrible judicial decisions, and myriad other literalistic literary approaches that destroy our democracy and erode at our basic standards of reading. If you insist on critiquing a text for only its surface-level qualities, you will inevitably ignore or obfuscate the deeper meanings of that text. Write your own children's story if you don't like this one. Or don't read it to your kids at all. I understood its message when I was five, and I understand it now, and I'm ashamed that so many people insist on ignoring it in favor of a crusty, outdated approach to children's literature and refuse to read between the damn lines.