Before I had kids, there were some things I was so excited to share with them. Family hikes, museums, theater, and, of course, books. Before they were even born, I stocked their little shelves with plenty of Mo Willems, Sandra Boynton, Anna Dewdney, Dr. Seuss, and Beatrix Potter. As soon as they were old enough to write their name we went to the library to get cards and, to this day, go at least once a week to bring home a fresh haul.
But just because books in general are amazing, magical things does not mean that there aren’t total duds out there. Not all children’s books are created equal, as Reddit user Caa3098 recently pointed out on the popular r/Parenting subreddit who posted: “What’s the worst kid’s book you’ve come across?”
“I’ve learned to read the whole book before I purchase in store but for books ordered online or books from relatives, it is a total gamble,” they begin.
They go on to list the following examples of books that just haven’t passed muster. A Toy Story book “that turned out to be an AI retelling of the story with the darkest and grainiest screenshots from the movie”; A CoComelon branded book that simply contained the lyrics to Christmas carols; a “12 Days of Christmas”-style book featuring long, difficult to pronounce dinosaur names that absolutely wouldn’t make for pleasant reading (you try saying “three thescelosauruses throwing” nine times in one bedtime); and “that awful Jimmy Fallon book where 95% of the words in the book are just ‘mama’.”
“I always think of the movie Elf where his dad is like ‘We’re not gonna take a $30,000 bath so some kid can find out what happens to a stupid puppy and a pigeon. Send it without the last 5 pages,’” they muse. “Because seriously there has to be zero oversight or give a shit left in most of these publishers.”
The original poster (OP, if you’re chronically online) is highlighting several trends in children’s books that are becoming more and more prevalent in the industry. Chief among them: the use of AI to write children’s books. Currently, there’s no shortage of folks out there pumping out dozens, even hundreds of children’s books this way and using search engine optimization (SEO) to get it to the top of Amazon’s algorithm in a get-rich-quick scheme that sacrifices quality and doesn’t appear to care at all about promoting a love of reading or childhood literacy. (A problem not limited to children’s books, incidentally.) But even big names, like Mark Zuckerberg, are using AI to create their stories.
There’s also celebrity children’s books, which dominate the market despite the fact that celebrities are not necessarily particularly skilled at children’s prose (and it is, in fact, a skill). More often than not it’s their name, not their stories, that are selling copies… though even then, not always, as Meghan Markle learned. (And I will contend that every now and then you get a great celebrity children’s book, like B.J. Novak’s The Book With No Pictures, but those tend to be outliers.)
And of course, sometimes there are books that, even without AI or a celebrity/publishing house hoping to make a quick buck, are lazy and bad or even deeply, unfortunately problematic.
u/Caa3098 ends their post by opening up the question to others: “So what’s the worst/laziest one you’ve found?”
Redditors were quick to chime in. As of press time, the question has received more than 1,000 replies.
“Maybe they are not the literal worst, but I strongly dislike those picture books, usually though not always ‘written by’ celebrities, that are meant to be empowering and mainly consist of ‘you are amazing and unique and loved and can do anything you set your mind to, my special child’ over and over,” says u/Frellyria. “No plot, no anything, just platitudes.”
“I picked up a book from a garage sale called Don’t Call me Little Bunny,” says u/MissRiss918. “It’s a German children’s book. I did not read it myself before reading it to [my 4 and 5 year olds]. After being called Little Bunny, the main character is angry. I remember flipping the page and all of a sudden the bunny has a gun.”
“I have come across one where Santa’s elves make little girl dolls that are definitely sentient,” says u/socke42. “Then Santa casually looks under their skirts going ‘ho ho ho’, and if the dolls can’t say ‘mama’ or aren’t cute enough, he throws them on the discard pile. That went straight into the garbage.”
Categories of books redditors disapproved of include the Goodnight series, that applies the Goodnight Moon formula to different cities, states, or countries; story books marketed as “5-minutes” (they’re either not five minutes or not good, redditors say); books based on children’s movies; and books written with adults, rather than children, in mind (usually books that promote an ideology, or “boss babe” books as one commenter put it: “I’m a feminist but … some of those women are literal war criminals).
And, of course, there was debate. Some people love The Wonky Donkey, which others hated. As always, classics like The Giving Tree and I’ll Love You Forever were the subject of some good-natured back and forth. Because, at the end of the day, a good book is in the eyes of the reader… but, seriously, stay clear of those AI generated monstrosities and the bunny with the gun.
Head to the original threadif you want more anti-recommendations.
