Children's books

Now that we have two little kids in the house we're reading a lot of kids books.  I am absolutely shocked by how many kids books have typographical errors in them.

First off, kids books don't have A) lots of words or B) very long words.  [BTW, when I say "kids" I'm referring to 1 - 2 years old.]  So errors should be very easy to catch.  I'm an engineer and I'll be the first to admit my spelling and grammar are not the best.  So the fact that I'm catching all these errors just means there are most likely more errors that I'm missing.

Secondly, the whole idea behind a kids book is to help teach kids how to read and write.  How can kids be expected to grow up and speak proper English when the authors of their books can't even read or write.

So what are some of these errors you ask?  By far the biggest error is using the word till when they mean 'til. 'Til with an apostrophe is short for until, but so frequently the author uses till, as in "to till the soil."

Probably the second most common mistake is using round instead 'round (again short for around).  So the popular kids song goes, "the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round."

Both of these errors are similar in that A) it involves contractions and B) both forms are legitimate English words which means you can't rely on a computer spell-check to correct the mistake.

And there are tons of other errors such as improper punctuation.  When listing 3 or more items use commas to separate them (or depending on the situation even semi-colons, but again we're talking about kids books so the list should never be so complicated as to require semi-colors to separate the items).

Most of the books we have were given to us as gifts or hand-me-downs.  There is no way I would ever spend money on a book like this in the store, I don't want to support authors who can't proof read something as simple as a kids book, or be bothered to have someone else check their work.