The Scholastic Book Club, Vol 1: Sonic the Hedgehog

My second-ever idea for a recurring feature on this site, wherein I mine my childhood bookshelf for precious content. Because I had to write something before next year's Valentine's Day list to space the articles apart.

I was digging through my closet recently and found the little cow-shaped book holder my grandparents either made for me or bought at a craft fair, but which I cherish regardless of origin because these grandparents are the ones I like and not the psychopaths from my father's side of the family. In this beloved keepsake of book-holding antiquity was housed my collection of chapter books from the '90s Scholastic Arrow Book Club orders that I got back when I was a miniature little shit instead of the roughly adult-shaped little shit that I am today. So I thought to myself, "There must be a way to turn this into worthless content on the Internet that I'll never see a dime from." I failed to think of anything, so I'm just going to write about it instead, in the 34th Dimension's latest feature series: The Scholastic Book Club.

The actual artefact in question, sitting on the floor of my actual closet. True fans will use it to dox my location.

I have, like, half a dozen of these books for children that I can barely get through today because I've been infected with the adult onset diabetism. That should be plenty of material to write one or two of these things if I focus on one at a time before I get bored and give up.

In this first edition (I have to point out the puns because I know the only people reading this are retarded), I'll be droning on about the very first book my parents ever bought for me on this accursed school-days order-schism.

The 34th Dimensions reluctantly presents...

Sonic the Hedgehog

This is my actual copy, not some knock-off stolen from the Sonic wiki. Note the distinct lack of crusted jism along the edges.

This one goes so far back that it may have actually come from the Troll Book Club instead of Scholastic Arrow. I distinctly remember one year wondering what happened to Troll and why it was replaced by Scholastic. Even before I was ten years old I was curmudgeonly nostalgic, so I can only wonder why my parents never had me tested for autism. It was probably the first chapter book I ever owned, so you can thank Sonic the Hedgehog for my early reading prowess that I'd eventually abandon because being an English major at university killed any joy I once got from reading. But at least I still have a higher reading comprehension than 99% of you, even if my math skills are shit and I don't understand what 99 per cent of something actually is. Math is all lies told by wizards anyway, which is exactly why Doctor Robotnik is the villain of today's story.

You see, Doctor Robotnik is a scientist. "What is a scientist?" you may ask. Well, unlike a mathematician who makes up numbers purely for the joy of fucking with the rest of us, scientists use the Queen's maths for real-world applications and are thus purely evil.

"But you're clearly writing this article on a computer, which was created through the dark arts of math and science," you are surely objecting right now. But you've been misinformed, deer reader. Computers were made by Isaac Asimov who was an author, so they are creations of good and noble intent. He willed them into existence along with sand worms or that might have been Frank Herbert or Tim Burton. They're all the same person, regardless. They're called "pseudonyms" and I suggest you adopt one before I manage to track you down. I'm getting close.

I can use AI-generated images for my articles without being cancelled because I don't care about ethics and that makes it 100% legal.

You're no doubt curious what actually happens in this, the very first novelization of Sonic the Hedgehog: Little First Readers Edition. Well, I didn't bother re-reading it so you'll have to make due with accepting my drunken remembrances as truth.

Contained within these 60-something pages, we learn that Sonic had an uncle. Or maybe it was a grandfather. I remember in the illustrations he was basically Sonic but with bushy eyebrows and a moustache so he could have been any age over 30. I think he also had a wrench at some point, so he was probably a mechanic of some sort. That means he was clearly working with Doctor Robotnik. The two of them were conspiring to use the corrupting influence of engineering to keep Sonic up at night with their nu metal music that people would only admit was always good, actually, 30 years later.

Pictured: Betrayal, and Sonic's first WikiFeet submission.

But back then, Sonic was still in denial about how much Limp Bizkit actually rocked because he hadn't seen the intro to Netflix's Devil May Cry series. So he vowed in that moment to rebel against Robotnik and his uncle Ron. Thus was born the feud between Sonic and Robotnik and Ron that would last until Yuji Naka was arrested for insider trading, but then kept alive by furries who refuse to admit that Sonic Frontiers looks like a bad Unity asset flip game. But so does Super Mario Odyssey, which means the universe is overall balanced and won't collapse into oblivion and is the reason why we all have to go to work tomorrow.

And that is Sonic's 100% canonical origin story. If you remember things differently, you probably read the Archie Comics version which was only loosely based on the events of this article.