The Worst Book

I love reading books to my kids.  I love snuggling up and getting their undivided attention for a little bit.  I love reading my childhood favorites to them and seeing their reaction.  I really do enjoy reading with my kids.

Except when the book sucks.

And sometimes books just suck.  Sometimes the story is ridiculous or the illustrations are crappy.  Whatever the reason, I’m sure all parents have at one time or another come across a book they simply cannot stand.

Today I happened to stumble across just such a book.

We got the book from the library this week.  As usual when I’m exploring new children’s books I thumbed through the first couple of pages to see if it was something we’d be interested in.  It was a story about a knight and a dragon and it was by an author who I knew and liked.  But oh, man, am I pissed at that guy now!

You see, only the first few pages had words on them.  The rest of the pages were pictures…just pictures.  I’m sorry, did you take a nap in the middle of writing this book?  Go on vacation?  Have a nervous breakdown?  Where are the words?  I want the words.

I got the book home and started "reading" it (and I use that term loosely) to the kids.  I was already into it by the time I realized my mistake.  What the fuuuuuuuck is going on here?  Where are the words? I started to panic.

That doesn’t sound so horrible, you may say.  But let’s remember when there are only pictures in a book the pictures need to be explained.  And trying to explain the pictures is work.  And know what I don’t need in my life right now?  More work.

Like, Hello! Mr. Author Guy…you only did HALF YOUR JOB! If I wanted to be responsible for coming up with an engaging story to accompany of bunch of pictures I would have BECOME AN AUTHOR MYSELF!

Some parents may not mind picture books.  And that’s a personal choice.  In fact, when kids are really little a book with just pictures is great for going ‘Oh, look! A moon! A block! A martini!’  (What? An upside down triangle doesn’t look like a martini to you? I digress…)

When your kids get older they expect you to explain the pictures. In detail. I couldn’t believe I got sucked into a book with only, like,three pages of words. And two of the word pages were only one sentence! That’s how they get ya.  Then after they get ya you turn the page and see this…

 

Soooo…ummm…they’re training to fight each other but apparently they both kind of suck at it? And, like, the dragon is all ‘I’m gonna breathe some nasty fire at you’ and the knight says ‘Whateva! I’m gonna run you through with this long stick thing’ (which probably has a name but I don’t know what it is).

And as you’re looking at the picture you think the next page will definitely have words on it cause who the hell cops out of a story line three pages in!

Oh. This guy.  This guy does that.

 

 

And so they’re going to fight each other.  And they’re running towards each other.  The dragon has his fire breath and the knight has his stick thing, which I hope he got a little more practice with cause damn he was bad at that before! And pretty much this is the most boring picture I've ever seen.  Literally nothing is happening. 

Honestly…the actual story written by the actual author comes back at some point, right?

Wrong.

 

Well, looks like that didn’t go so well.  I don’t know why they thought it would.  Neither of those assholes was very good at his job.  You’re an f’ing DRAGON!  You’re sole responsibility in life is to breathe fire on things and you F’ed it up? Worthless.  And hey, knight? You really shoulda called in sick this day.  Also WTF is that princess doing in the background?  Does she have a purpose in this story?

Oh, she does have a purpose.  Her purpose is to be the typical nagging woman telling those dumb asses ‘I told you so!’ The moral of the story is Bitches be right pretty much all the time.

The other moral of the story is that I'm really, really shitty at making up stories...

 

And all of a sudden everyone is happy and eating hamburgers.  But since the Dragon and the Knight were such failures in life their food was contaminated, the whole town got Mad Cow Disease and everyone died…The End!

See, Author Man? See what happens when you take the lazy route?  Where was your editor during the writing process?  You could have written like ten more sentences and I wouldn’t have to hate you this much. 

Enough with this half ass ‘let the kids use their imaginations’ bullshit because really it’s the parents who then have to use their imaginations.  And in my imagination there is a widespread disease outbreak in the kingdom.  And the fact that I even had to come up with that ending is entirely your fault.  How do you feel now? 

In the future it’d be nice if you could finish your books.  Thanks.