In a recent Hornbook article, Daniel Hade writes about the eight large media conglomerates who dominate children's book publishing. They think of children, not as readers, but as consumers and "aren't really in the business of publishing children's books anymore...the business is developing brands." A brand, is an idea, rather than a specific product, like a book. So Curious George is now more than a beloved character, he's a recognizable brand pictured on products from crib bumpers to alarm clocks .
Series books are brands, the concept spawning multiple titles, each variation bearing resemblance to the original idea. Each hopes to inspire a familiarity that persuades young consumers and their parents to buy. But are brands always bad? Recent review of currently popular titles shows that while some might be formulaeic, we've come a long way since Goosebumps and Babysitter's club. The writing, concept and characters are often more sophisticated and complex.
An exception to new and improved writing are the skinny first novels new readers love. The formulaeic quality that lies at the core of most series offers them the continuity, predictability, and similar reading experiences they seek. They don't look for excellence of writing, they want simplicity and ease. They are book gobblers.
According to area booksellers and librarians, the biggest direct hit for six to nine year-olds is Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House series published by Random House. The protagonists, eight-year-old Jack and his seven-year-old sister Annie, discover a tree house filled with books belonging to Morgan le Fay "the magical librarian of Camelot". When they point to a picture in a book, they travel to that time or place.
Thanksgiving Thursday (#27), the newest release, transports Jack and Annie to the first Thanksgiving. Like others in the series, this paperback provides magic, adventures, learning, and humor and illustrations, short chapters and large-print also drive the experience for new readers.
Teachers are also significant Magic Tree House consumers. They are thrilled with the reading pleasure it inspires, delight in the pro-learning heroes and utilize these books in reading groups and furthering curriculum .
All this and these books are cheap! The paperbacks generally sell for four or five dollars. What else could you want? Actually, Osborne thought of something else. She's launched The Research Guide series, a set of non-fiction books corresponding to the fiction titles. This series is just as understandable, picture-rich, and well-researched.
Aside from Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket is the brand name most recognizable to middle-graders. These gothic-style novels feature the three resilient Baudelaire orphans who face off against evil Count Olaf. Snicket (aka Daniel Handler) plans to pen thirteen adventures The latest, Carnivorous Carnival (#9) will arrive on October 29th.
While it follows the formulaeic principle, the Snicket brand has smarts at the core of its success. Handler's passion for books and words please sophisticated eight to twelve-year-old readers. He draws on the traditions of Wilde, Dahl, Carroll and Dickens and adorns his stories with literary references to Poe, Orwell, Salinger and Virginia Woolf. These, delivered in a playful Monty-Python-style reach wise children who are disgusted by pedantic lectures and sappy platitudes. Humor, adventure, irony, cliff hangers, good fighting evil, and the plucky characters add more appeal. Snickets work well as read-alouds, but plot similarities may weaken adult interest. Cost won't! HarperCollins has designed these hardcovers to look like ragged-edged Victorian dime novels, and priced them from $8.95-$9.95.
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl is a middle-grade series nipping at Snicket's heels. The projected four book series has just released it's second title, The Arctic Incident (Hyperion, $16.95; ages 9 and up). In the first volume,we met twelve-year-old Artemis, a James Bond figure whose greed motivates him to plot against the Low Elements Police Recon (or Leprecon) to gain their fairy gold.
The apparent lack of formula found in most series shows promise. Unfortunately, the second volume misses the complexity of character the first offered. Artemis, searching for his missing father, is less greedy, edgy, and adversarial. He is sympathetic rather than unscrupulous. His schemes and Colfer's plot are more transparent and less dimensional. Colfer is more consistent with the fairy characters who threaten literary take-over in the second book. The author's insights about mythic and fey folk are one of the series' best strands. He tells us, for example, that while centaurs are all brains and "the average goblin (finds) simultaneous scratching and spitting a challenge."
Colfer's recipe for brand success mixes elements kids love. There's fantasy, technology, gadgetry, and power plays with sassy dialogue, word play and puns. He stirs in pithy descriptions, intelligent humor, and adds just a pinch of the bawdy. This series is slated to become a movie which should come as no surprise as Disney is part of the Miramax machine. The publishers reportedly offered Colfer one of the largest advances in children's book history (nearly $1.3 million for the combined book and movie rights).
In his article, Hade points out "books of high literary quality appear each season and remind us that great storytelling can survive" . Some series, like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, fall into this category. So does one of the best selling new YA series, Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthurian Trilogy. In the first book, The Seeing Stone, (Scholastic, $6.99) young Arthur de Caldicot is befriended by Merlin and gazes into a stone to watch vignettes from the life of King Arthur (or Arthur-in-the-stone). Though de Caldicot lives a century later, these scenes often bear a connection to his life.
In the first book, Arthur de Caldicot wanted to become a squire. In the second, At the Crossing Places (Scholastic, $17.95), he prepares for the Crusades, wonders about his parentage, falls in love for the first time and watches King Arthur struggle with power and love. He is at a crossing place "between my child-self and my man-self. My squire-self and knight-self...Between my life here and the world of the stone."
Both books are well-referenced, carefully structured, and beautifully written. Like Harry Potter, the brand against which all others are judged, the protagonist grows and matures and his thinking becomes more sophisticated in succeeding stories. Like the Harry Potter series, these books were wisely imported from England by Arthur Levine.
Hade worries that these "corporations hold a near monopoly on our culture's stories and the means to communicate those stories". He wonders "What parts of our children are not for sale?" This question is worth asking before purchasing. But while series generally fit the "brand" mentality of the mega-conglomerates, the titles reviewed here are as much story as sales driven. When and if they become movies, cross media lines, and begin belching out products that children need to own, it will be time to ask that question again.
And there's a message here for those mega publishing moguls; the kind of bottom dollar concept that speaks to them. Better quality might be the key to better the sales!
Area Booksellers and Librarians cite other High Selling Series