Natalie's Theory of Children's Entertainment

To kill time on our five-hour-flight from Orlando yesterday, our daughter, Natalie, bought at the airport Borders a "Life Story" glossy on Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Disney's Hannah Montana. (Hey, she's 10.) She was thumbing through it at the kitchen table this morning and my wife, Laurie, noticed a photo of Cyrus with her mother.

"Wait, she has a mom?" Laurie asked.

"Yeah..."

"But, she's not on the show."

(Cyrus' real-life father, one-hit wonder Billy Ray Cyrus, plays her character's father on their Disney Channel sitcom.)

"She didn't fit in," Natalie replied.

Natalie continued. "It's a Disney show. The mother always has to be dead."

This insight coming from the girl who, in third grade, would balk whenever I suggested buying a book with an animal in the title, such as "The Yearling" or "The Red Pony."

Why? I asked.

"Because if there is an animal in the title of a children's book," she explained, with her head tilted and eyebrow arched, "by the end of that book, you know that animal is going to be dead."

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