One of my favorite parts of the movie "Elf".. actually scratch that. I'm a card-carrying Millennial. ALL of "Elf" is my favorite part. Do you know the part where they are introducing Buddy the Elf's dad Walter Hobbs to the viewers? They show him in his big boss desk having some hilarious discussions. The one with the nun who says "But the children love the books" is absolutely one of my most quoted lines of all time. I want to talk about the other main interaction where he is being confronted about a missing page in one of the books he's published. Instead of "taking a $30,000 bath" to reprint, he instead decides that, "you know what, no kid actually needs to know what happens to the puppy and the pigeon. SHIP IT." Spoiler alert: this decision comes back to bite him.
Anyways, I want to talk about this puppy and pigeon book. Well not that book specifically, but basically what that book represents. Books that get printed that make absolutely no sense. I've read them. A lot of them. I'm sure you've read them too. Maybe you didn't actually know they didn't make sense; with some of these books it's really easy to just black out while you read it and 5 minutes later have no recollection of what you just did. If you really pay attention though, there are so many awful books out there. In my head I'd like to imagine that it was likely the result of some dude in a suit ignoring a mistake and just pushing on. My gut tells me it's much worse than that though.
Exhibit A: the PJ Masks Story Collection
It was my night to read with our 4-year-old and of course he pulls out his "PJ Masks Story Collection" large book. I have nothing against PJ Masks. Even if every single episode seems to end with the "see? If we work together we can solve any problem!" conclusion, it's still kind of cute and definitely not the worst thing that my kids have watched. These 5 minute stories though just make no sense. The first one starts with some random villains who steal car parts and then bring them to some alternate dimension, universe, etc. None of this is explained at all. Instead we are given a full spread of the "Greg Becomes Gekko!" intro, which is a crowd favorite but definitely doesn't do much plot building. Then Catboy decides to just run out to try to catch these villains, but supposedly fails because he's not fast enough or something for this new dimension. Yet somehow he becomes fast enough to leave it and then we get the whole "but Catboy, we are a team, you should have waited for us!" trope. At this point I'm thinking that there are probably at least 3 missing pages in this book. Yet somehow I could still potentially fill in the gaps in my head about what is happening.
The story officially goes off the rails when all of a sudden they manage to spawn 3 magical creatures (with admittedly pretty awesome names. Cat Stripe King? Sick) with some major crystal? Yet again, no explanations given at all. Then all of a sudden the villains see these animals, realize they can't steal them because they don't have wheels, run away, and boom, the story is over. What? I have so many questions. Are those villains going to return all of the stolen cars? Are these spawned animals just going to be here forever? I really really want to give stories the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I just missed something. Or maybe there is more context in the images that I could use to help piece together the story. After the 10th read though, I've come to the conclusion that it just doesn't make sense. The worst part of it all is that it doesn't need to make any sense. My son still asks for it. Nods along the entire time. Never has any of the questions that I have. He's just happy he's getting some PJ Masks in book form and bonus points for hearing dad say "POWER LIZARD" with some authority.
It's not just PJ Masks
I don't mean to pick on this book in particular. It's just the one I most recently read that made me have to write out this diatribe. We have a distressing number of these books and they do share a lot in common. Does it utilize some popular kids' intellectual property? If yes, then it's much more likely to be the case. Was it written before 1990? Is it part of some "story collection"? If either, then yes, it's much more likely to not make any sense. I'm not exactly sure what you should do with this information because I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. I haven't taken any of these books out of the rotation (even if I will never proactively choose them myself). I haven't called any publisher to complain. I don't even necessarily complain about it to my 4-year-old (it would fall on deaf ears, trust me). I think it's mostly just me screaming into the void wishing this wasn't a thing.