Can anyone out there provide a rational explanation for the continued use of dust jackets on books for young children? You get bonus points if you yourself are currently a parent of young children.

I’m not quite to the point of tossing picture book dust jackets directly into the recycling bin as soon as they come into our house. I still pick them up off the floor, far from the book they belong to, once, twice, maybe three times. And then I recycle them.

But I’m starting to sense the futility of those attempts to reunite book with dust jacket. Really, now — can’t we just stop producing those?