Gentry
"Seasons"
March, 2005 |
Beware of the Celebrity Author
Christine VanDeVelde discusses the trend of celebrity-penned children's
books The newest must-have for celebrities isn't a Balenciaga
handbag or Malibu acreage with a view. It's your name on the cover of a
children's picture book. On the shelves of the local book store, you'll
now find titles from Gloria Estefan, Billy Crystal, Jay Leno, Garrison
Keillor, John Lithgow, Henry Winkler, Katie Couric, and, of course,
Madonna. It used to be that when someone struck it rich, they opened a
restaurant. Now, instead of Casablanca's Rick Blaine, they all want to be
Mother Goose. Because, of course, anyone can write a children's book.
Right...
The first two books in the five-book, seven-figure deal Madonna struck
with Callaway Editions have sold more than a million copies. Yet the Horn
Book Magazine, the premier journal of children's literature, had this to
say in an editorial about Madonna and her books: "…she shouldn't write
books for children, because she can't write." Their online review rating
for her first effort, The English Roses, garnered a 6, signifying a
book that is "Unacceptable in style, content, and/or illustration." And
such criticisms are not exclusively for Madonna – books from Leno,
Lithgow, and Keillor have been variously described as "insipid,"
"marginal," "flawed," "disjointed" and even "one joke writ large."
As well, children's books penned by celebrities are, as the Horn Book
so aptly puts it, "as hectoringly moralistic as any episode of 'The
O'Reilly Factor.'" Witness Madonna's "mother knows best" messages and
Katie Couric's goody two-shoes characters. Lucy Sprague Mitchell, the
founder of the renowned Bank Street School -- and first Dean of Women at
UC Berkeley -- described such books as being of the "spinach" variety. In
fact, children's books, Mitchell said, are supposed to be a place "where
adults are not perpetually and eternally right." Remember Peter Pan?
So, let's be honest about the real audience for these books. It's not the
child. The intended audience is bookstores and the parents who patronize
them. Thoughts of what might truly charm and delight the child aren't part
of the transaction.
William Scott published many of the all-time best-selling children's
authors from Margaret Wise Brown (Good Night, Moon) to Esphyr
Slobodkina (Caps for Sale). It was his view that picture books are
"the simplest, subtlest, most communicative, most elusive, most
challenging book form of them all." Scott used progressive schools like
Bank Street as try-out laboratories for his books in order to find
material of the most compelling interest to children. His
authors, like Wise Brown, wrote their books after prolonged periods of
observing children, writing down snippets of their conversations and the
language they used. Their stories for children are informed by an
understanding of childhood, literature, language, and imagination.
Madonna's fifth book will be in stores soon. It's a story about how wealth
is overrated, featuring a greyhound named "Lotsa de Casha." She must have
been thinking about her contract to write the book, because her potential
audience of children doesn't even know what money is, let alone "wealth."
Children are interested in rhythm, patterns, and direct observations of
the world around them, not adult conceptualizations of morality and money.
The best-selling children's book of all time is Janette Sebring Lowrey's
The Poky Little Puppy. First published in 1942, it has sold almost
15 million copies. It begins, "Five little puppies dug a hole under the
fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world." Lowrey doesn't tell us
if the five little puppies were excessively wealthy.
So, parents, choose wisely. Take the time to sit down in the bookstore and
read that book before you buy it. Remember you're trying to raise a
reader. As one reviewer said of Billy Crystal's book, if you can
barely read it, "imagine the effect on a five-year-old." Children learn
through play. So, think of a book as a play date. Now… would you rather
your child spend the day with the playmate who wrote Sex or the one
who wrote Runaway Bunny? |
