Dad Spots Glaring Error in Son's Storybook: 'Blatant Misinformation'

An eagle-eyed dad had fellow parents up in arms on social media after spotting a glaring error in one of his young son's favorite books.

Comedian Jay Foreman took to X (formerly Twitter) after noticing something was amiss while reading The Smeds and the Smoos, by Julia Donaldson, to his son.

"My son loves the TV version of this story," Foreman told Newsweek. "So we bought the book for him and he loves it too."

Reading is one of the most important things you can do for a young child, according to Laura Phillips, senior director of the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming children's lives through education.

"Just exposure to words is the single most important thing that you can do to help build the language pathways in your child's brain," she told the Child Mind Institute. "Reading and exposure to words helps kids maximize their language and cognitive capacity."

Foreman no doubt understands the importance of this. However, while reading the story to his son, he noticed something about this particular book that began to bother him.

Illustrated by Axel Scheffler, The Smeds and the Smoos depicts the story of two species—the Smeds, who are red, and the Smoos, who are blue—that live alongside each other but never mix.

In a twist reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, a young Smed and Smoo end up falling in love, even though their families express their disapproval.

Fortunately, love conquers all (unlike in Shakespeare's play), and the two species end up coming together following the birth of a decidedly purple baby who is both Smed and Smoo.

These details are important to know in the context of Foreman's complaint. When he turned to one of the pages introducing the purple baby, Donaldson had written: "That baby was purple from head to toe."

There was just one problem, though, as Foreman noted in his tweet: "No it wasn't." For reasons unknown, Scheffler had illustrated the baby as having yellow, webbed feet rather than purple ones.

Foreman has a theory as to how this might have happened, noting that Donaldson and Scheffler have "said in interviews that they often don't meet before their books are published."

"Axel, who lives in Germany and speaks English as a second language, simply adds illustrations without consulting Julia," he said. "Perhaps this is the source of the error?"

Newsweek has contacted the publisher of the book for further clarification.

Regardless of how it happened, Foreman soon found himself flooded with responses from fellow parents who had seen the mistake themselves or were stunned to notice it for the first time.

"This has bothered me every single one of the 2,000 times I've read it," one user wrote. Another commented: "I'd never noticed that. You have ruined the smeds and the smoos for me!"

A third said: "This blatant misinformation has to end," while a fourth joked: "Wow what a good lesson to teach children: lying."

Elsewhere, one X user couldn't resist branding it "fake Smoos," while another argued: "Has no toes tho, so technically correct."

So far, the tweet has garnered over 100,000 views, and Foreman has been blown away by the response and some of the fresh revelations that have emerged. "In the TV version of this story, they've added a bit of purple to the baby's feet to fix this," he said. "But it looks even weirder."

Foreman is keen to stress that it's all meant in good fun, though. "I know there are lots of parents following me on Twitter, and it can be fun to overanalyze the kids' books and TV shows that we're all reading and watching together," he said. "I usually get great responses from fellow parents who have had similar observations about the same books and can add extra comments."

Above all else, he's just happy to have gone viral for something harmless and fun. "Social media can be a really nasty and toxic place nowadays, so it's really lovely to use it for something altogether more wholesome, silly and fun," he said.

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