The idea of sentient toys becomes horrifying in all sorts of ways if you take it seriously. How many of your once-loved childhood toys have now been sealed in cold dark boxes for years? How many have been ripped to pieces or discarded in garbage dumps?<p>On the other hand, another thing that bugs me about many American writers about slavery is that they only consider it in the context of 19th-century America, rather than as something that occurred in nearly all parts of the world for nearly all of history.