In the July 22 issue of Publisher's Weekly, Stephen Roxburgh, publisher of Front Street Books, a small aesthetics-first children's press recently begun in North Carolina, writes: "We're dealing with an industry that has fundamentally changed from privately held businesses, run by individuals with mixed motives and priorities, to publicly held businesses whose investors demand, first and foremost, a return on their money."
Parents, teachers, children can see it as well, just by walking into their nearest super bookstore. The bottom line is: Sell at all costs. This seems to have created a whole new set of rules which might make for children's book dollar success, but most definitely creates reviewer revulsion.
For several years I've noticed the trend to sell bad books with a recognizable name. Yes, there are exceptions, but for the most part professionals who shine in other arenas, are not children's book professionals. This year there are even some return celebs
Dom DeLuise publishes his third children's book, King Bob's New Clothes (Simon and Schuster, $15.00), a retelling of The Emperor's New Clothes. In it he breaks every rule known to children's book writers. He patronizes with cutsey writing and intrusive editorializing. As if he hasn't had at children enough, he ends with four recipes (hopefully his cooking prowess is better than his writing skills) and a list of six rules all children should follow.
Another celeb who returns to children's books is Fergie. This year, the Duchess of York publishes two novels with the prince and the pauper motif, The Royal Switch and Bright Lights which the catalog promotes as "a modern-day Patty Duke Show set in London" ($14.95; 7-11; Delacorte).
Other celebs who make a picture book appearance this year are: William Wegman, Tim Burton, Garrison Keillor, Oksana Baiul, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, Dolly Parton, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Marianne Williamson and Mark Helprin.
Celeb books don't always fail, two notable exceptions are: Maya Angelou's Kofi and His Magic (Knopf, ages 4-9) with brilliant photographs by Margaret Courtney-Clarke that describes the life of a child from the West African town of Bonwire, famous for its kente cloth and Actress Jamie Lee Curtis' Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born (HarperCollins, $14.95; ages 3-8) a very successful book about adoption.
This year's TV- tie-in books include those based on WMAC Masters, Step by Step, Xena, Hercules and Xfiles. These pulp masterpieces don't want to miss any readers (or should that be watchers) so sometimes they hit two age groups at once. There's Baywatch Sprinters for Young Adults and for younger TV-sophistocates, there's Baywatch Junior Lifeguard books,like Baywatch Beach Shots: The Junior LIfegurad Photo Album which promises "hot sizzling photos".
The biggest culprit of movie-tie in is...you guessed it! Disney who started a whole press to launch book-movie tie-ins. In the past year they've brought out books about Hunchback of Notre Dame, Jack, Winnie the Pooh, Pocahontas, 101 Dalmations, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, The Mighty Ducks, and James and the Giant Peach. And often one movie comes in different book forms from junior novelization to pop-up.
When book characters come alive in children's lives, many publishers see this as an opportunity to repackage them. Many classics, like Jack Ezra Keat's Snowy Day or Bill Martin's Brown Bear Brown Bear make a board book appearance and on the surface it makes sense to make them durable enough to be toted by toddlers and sucked on by babies and survive. But buyers beware! Books may be excerpted or babify the magical words of Beatrix Potter .
There's a growing tendency to use best-beloved characters to launch product lines. Witness Milne spin-offs including Pooh's Little Fitness Book which stresses health hints like "smackerel-loading". The Little House characters by Laura Ingalls Wilder are now in picture books, board books, a friendship book with locket, paper dolls, a trivia book, a song book, a cookbook, baby book and baby photograph album. The books have been repackaged in board book and picture books.
There's a growing tendency to use poor defenseless book characters to launch product lines. They make new appearances in plush or puppets, or on mugs, cards, mobiles, calendars, and postcards.
One of the most frightening new trends is the marriage of toy and book companies. Duplo books are being released rapidly by Little Brown. Dial is publishing an entire Looney Tunes and Playskool Books series.
Many of the books read more like commercials than books. In Tonka's Big Book of Trucks, published by Scholastic, the Tonka trademark appears 172 times in this forty-five paged book!
The gimmick craze started with pop-ups. They now range from sublime works of paper design art to those created strictly to sell. The gift of this genre is that it can sometimes suck in less motivated readers, who can learn painlessly from Jennie Maizels and Kate Petty's The Amazing Popup Grammar Book (Dutton, 16.99) or admire Robert Sabuda's The 12 Days of Christmas: A Celebration (Little Simon, $19.95). Sabuda, a master designer, says, " from one royalty check from one pop-up title, I made more than half of my last year's entire income"
Success has spawned successors. This year there were books which offered hologram art, came with 3-D glasses, and sandwiched into book format activity kits on tattoo, glass painting, and perfume making. My personal worst was "a one of a kind toy cellular flip phone complete with sound and light effects... teaches first phone facts" which the catalog recommends for ages 3 and up.
R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series is a major marketing phenomenon. Lately these safe-scary manipulative books have even been packaged in Dorito bags, ironically pairing books with little literary nutrition and junk foods.
Goosebumps has not only have they triumphed in all kinds of spin offs, but they've inspired at least two marketing sensations. There are safe-scary series like Chillers, Monsterville; Fiendly Corners; and Graveyard School. And books that indulge children's love of the disgusting like the Barf-O-Rama series put out by Bantam-Doubleday-Dell whose twelve titles include: Scab Pie and Mucus Mansion. Most of these have a glossary to inspire learning new vocabulary words like "nose noodle."
As if these new rules weren't disheartening enough, the future could be even bleaker. A July 29 article in the New Republic entitled "Putting the Random Back in Random House" was based on a NY Post report that Random House is planning a series of fast tabloid books about sensational crimes for children called 'Headliners!" The first book, titled, Unabomber : Handled with Care tells children how a botched explosion might have been more successful and how to buy bomb basic at Radio Shack.