I should note that, at the time of writing, The Poky Little Puppy has 322 five-star reviews on Amazon. What are we to conclude from this? That pokiness pays off? That pokiness might be highly advantageous in some circumstances but marginally costly in other, less common circumstances? Or that Janette Sebring Lowrey had no point in mind, was unconcerned with the ethics or pragmatics of pokiness, hoped only to borrow the fable form, with its weighty theme and didactic tone, and use it to disguise her lack of moral vision? Over three days, the Poky Little Puppy is up by eight-and-three-quarters desserts. On the third day, each of the other puppies gets one-and-a-quarter portions-they share the PLP’s serving-whereas the PLP gets none. On the first two days the Poky Little Puppy gets the desserts to himself-five portions of dessert a night, for a total of ten portions.

This seems like a fable: There are animals acting like people and punishment and reward and the “ rule of three” structure. But now the faster puppies repair the hole under the fence and are rewarded with strawberry shortcake, leaving none for our poky hero. The story repeats again on the third day, with strawberry shortcake this time. What a noble achievement of mid-century American capitalism! What a boon to literacy! Without the Little Golden Books line, how many children would have owned no books at all? The first dozen titles (they also included The Little Red Hen, The Animals of Farmer Jones, and Prayers for Children) were priced at 25 cents each in their first six months, 1.5 million copies were printed. The idea behind Little Golden Books-a collaboration between Simon and Schuster and Western Printing, based in Racine, Wisconsin-was to make children’s books affordable to ordinary families. It was written by Janette Sebring Lowrey and illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren, although neither of their names appear on the cover. The Poky Little Puppy was one of the twelve original Little Golden Books, published in 1942. One of them may be the best-selling children’s picture book of all time. They are malign presences on the bookshelf. These are books that exert an irresistible pull on adult consciousness but don’t reward it.

But there’s a third set of children’s books: those that fall into an uncanny valley between enjoyable literature and ignorable junk.

Golden books poky puppy