Let’s Play Dr. Seuss Meets Dr. Ruth

Finally, I know why I’ve been so wildly unsuccessful as a children’s book author. I put two and two together after reading about Martha Freeman, the author whose most recent children’s book was rejected by her paperback publisher for including a passing reference to a gay couple.

What Freeman apparently didn’t understand, and I now do, is that the devil is in the details.

My first book, “Ginger Danny,” is the story of a little ginger boy who longs to become human. After the Candy Wizard grants Danny’s wish, he learns that he was actually better off as a cookie and ends up back on the bakery shelf. The moral is: Sometimes it’s best just being yourself.

Isn’t that a nice lesson for the younger generation? I think so.

And yet my publisher objected to a single paragraph in which Danny, as a young boy, has a flashback and engages in some inappropriate sexual conduct with an oatmeal cookie. For that one reason alone my book was rejected.

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water!

I tried again with “The Quackers,” in which a family of ducks attempts to make it in the big city. As their adventures unfold, they meet all kinds of colorful characters and learn to be accepting and tolerant. Friends of mine describe it as “delightful.”

Are there some tough lessons learned along the way? You bet there are. Does Daddy Duck turn to alcohol when Mother Duck admits to a lesbian tryst? Yes, he does, but it’s a very brief scene and it all happens out of earshot of the ducklings. Is that any reason to reject the entire book? The “publishing gestapo” thinks so.

Predictably, my next book, “Hoo! Hoo! Who?” met a similar fate. It’s the heart-warming tale of a family of owls that confronts the gut-wrenching issue of sibling incest.

“You can’t simply pretend that this issue doesn’t exist,” I told my publisher, moments before he hung up on me.

Alas, some dreams just aren’t meant to be. The real losers, of course, are the children who will have to somehow get along without being exposed to everyday issues like sexual perversity, alcoholism, marital infidelity and incest.

Shed no tears for me, though. My agent tells me I’m very close to getting a staff job on “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

I hope they’re not afraid of a little harsh reality.