YO MAMA: Open letter to publisher of the most annoying book on my child’s shelf
OPINION
Dear publisher of That Stupid Book (which is how I usually refer to this sorry piece of children’s literature),
Your annoying little book is ruining my life. In the last several weeks I have read it approximately 3,478 times. My two-year-old son can’t get enough of it. And I have no idea why.
Don’t get me wrong, I love reading to my child. But That Stupid Book isn’t exactly winning any John Newbery Medals. To be blunt, the book is complete and utter rubbish.
The illustrations are cheap and soulless, appearing to have been computer-generated using 90s clipart from Word. The pictures aren’t even historically cohesive. In one part of the story, everyone is wearing 1920s era clothing, while later, a jumbo jet airplane zooms across the sky. I wish I hadn’t noticed these details, but it’s one of those “look and find” books where you have to spot the differences in a pair of nearly mirror images. Sadly, every inch of That Stupid Book is seared into my memory like a bad tattoo.
The characters all have these deranged Stepford Wife smiles. Meanwhile, they converse with vehicles that have strange, human-like faces with worried eyes and fake smiles that make you skeptical of their working conditions. The story makes zero attempts at character development or anything resembling a plot, and instead meanders pointlessly along, introducing the reader to a host of characters that can likely be purchased in a McDonalds happy meal.
Suspiciously, there isn’t even an author or illustrator listed on the book, which was probably written by ChatGPT and funded by a mysterious shell corporation.
I can’t figure out why my son is so fixated on this book. Daily, I beg him to pick other titles off the shelf, but no matter where I have hidden it, that waste of paper gets pulled out. Where the Wild Things Are, I plead. Or Goodnight Moon or Love You Forever. Anything but another mind-numbing loop of That Stupid Book.
Could there be, I wonder, subliminal messaging hidden behind the words? Some sort of addictive scent embedded in the pages? Is the penetrating, computerized gaze of the protagonist brainwashing my child? There seems no other plausible explanation.
Stranger still is the fact that I have no idea how we came to possess this particular book. It simply showed up one day and has resisted all attempts at being vanquished (my son repeatedly rescues it from our thrift store donation box).
And so, I implore you: Please stop printing these Stupid Books. Publish something with at least a scrap of substance, something parents and children can enjoy together. You know who you are.
Sincerely,
A mom who is Stepford smiling as she reads your book for the 3,479 time.
— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.
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