Pagelings vs. Moldos

June 20th, 2025

As far as fictional libraries go, I think of The Page Master and Monsters University. Librarians are often painted as old and scary and mean. I personally have never experienced this stereotyped librarian, and I have also never seen a librarian shush a patron. I recently rewatched the Adventure Time “Paper Pete” episode (S3 E22). This episode takes place in Turtle Princess’s domain, the library. I was anticipating the stereotypical fictional library for this Adventure Time episode. While patrons do shush each other (it is still rude to talk too loud while people are researching) it follows a unique narrative about mold and damaged books.

While Adventure Time is of course set in a post-post-apocalyptic Earth, called Ooo, I wasn’t expecting monographs to be organized by Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal standards. In Ooo, librarians seem to organize books based on rhyme. Finn, the main character, is looking through a shelf where all titles end in “ities” which I can imagine is a cataloging nightmare.

Finn discovers damaged books, and correctly freaked out about it. “Damaged books! Who did this?!” Finn exclaimed, “I will avenge the slightly soiled books.” He is a true hero. He comes across these origami creatures, who identify themselves as Pagelings, led by Paper Pete. These creatures are the “blank pages at the beginning of every book”, which if you are unaware, are called a flyleaf, (yeah like the band). The Pagelings have been defending their books from the Moldos (little mold creatures) but are planning to give it their last shot to attack and defeat the Moldos. As shown on the above Teddy Bear Joke Book, the Moldos have been destroying the books in the library.

The solution that Finn comes to is instead of eliminating the Moldos, he gives them his shirt which will feed them for 40 years. I, personally, disagree! How dare Finn the Human feed mold growth, doesn’t he know this will only increase their population and cause immense damage to not only the books, but also the health of the library staff and patrons? I’m kidding, but I am right. While my library experience only started a year ago, I have already dealt with mold outbreaks in all three libraries I have worked in. While I wish this was an easy solution that we could actually implement, we will have to keep using traditional methods to thwart mold attacks.

If you haven’t seen Adventure Time, I obviously recommend it. It is not a nostalgia thing either, I watched it for the first time as an adult. It is currently on HBO Max but you can pirate it too, I don’t care. Or better yet, check if your local library carries the series on DVD or on their library streaming services. Most people don’t know that public libraries often subscribe to streaming services like Hoopla that offer free movies and shows to stream! Images were taken from the Adventure Time Wiki page.