I confess to feeling nonplussed when the publicist wrote to see if “Horn [ed note: AARGH] will review The Rabbit Who Wants to Go to Sleep,” the self-published bestseller that Random House picked up for a rumored seven-figure advance. I mean, yes, the Horn BOOK will review it in the Spring 2016 Horn Book Guide because that publication reviews non selectively, but, really, why are you asking me this? Is somebody making you do it? I felt one step away from a drunk Reese Witherspoon bellowing at a cop who didn’t know who she was.
But, okay, Rando, here’s what Horn thinks. The Rabbit Who Wants to Go to Sleep is a book designed to help parents get their kids to go to sleep. It has sold so many copies (already, I mean, but clearly RH thinks there are even more suckers out there) because it probably works as advertised. The text is long–really, really long– and droning and uneventful, and it will bore the brats right into dreamland. Authorial directives are everywhere, telling parents where to whisper, where to provide emphasis, where to yawn: “The name of the rabbit, Roger [ed note: fuck you], can be read as ‘Raaah-gerr’ with two yawns.” The combination of boredom plus suggestion will induce a hypnotic state in both parent and child and cause Chandler to walk around the apartment with a towel round his head like a girl make them very, very sleeeepy. (Despite what the Amazon reviews will tell you, this is not “magic.” Now, I would have thought that the kind of parent susceptible to The Rabbit Who Wants to Go to Sleep might have been horrified at the prospect of hypnotizing their offspring because that is how demons get in, but anything for a good night’s sleep, I suppose.) Mission accomplished.
If the seven-figure-advance rumor is true, I’d love for someone to do the math for me. Can this book (or books; the author and publisher are threatening a series) earn that much money back? Won’t parents figure out that Goodnight Moon–cheaper, prettier, and a billion times classier–does the same thing?
The post Wake me up when it’s all over appeared first on The Horn Book.
While Scholastic has gotten a lot of press these last couple of weeks about censoring its book club selections, this is not new; the company has been cleaning up its club editions ever since dirty words started appearing in children's books. Six Boxes of Books has the best analysis of the controversy I've seen yet.
Props to SLJ for getting this story out in the first place, but I have to note one thing that skeeved me out about the lede in the original article: "Don't expect to see Lauren Myracle's new book Luv Ya Bunches (Abrams/Amulet, 2009) at Scholastic school book fairs this year. It’s been censored—at least for now—due to its language and homosexual content." Calling the presence in a children's book of a couple of lesbian mothers "homosexual content" is gross unless the two of them are totally going at it.
Another duckling disappears.
I keep imagining how different writers might approach making a story out of the unintended consequences of Nebraska's "safe haven" law. The idea that your parents could give you up--or give up on you--so capriciously (and lawfully) is like a Maurice Sendak Nyquil nightmare. In The Grounding of Group Six Julian F. Thompson found a good deal of black humor in the premise, but in the right hands--Nancy Werlin, I'm looking at you--it could be terrifying.
As Peter observed in another context last Sunday, so many people have Ursula Nordstrom spinning in her grave that it must be like a blender in there. This won't help.
If one more person sends me that list of books Sarah Palin tried to ban from the library I'm gonna vote for Nader.
As quoted in the Wall Street Journal:
"There has been a real revolution" in books that "have more kid appeal," especially when it comes to boys, says Ellie Berger, who oversees Scholastic's trade division. "It's a shift away from the drier books we all grew up with."
And I would love to know whose ass this statistic was pulled out of:
Last year, U.S. publishers released 261 new works of juvenile fiction aimed at boys, more than twice the number put out in 2003, according to Bowker's Books in Print database. There were 20 nonfiction entries for boys, compared with just four in 2003.
The post about judging people--I mean, getting to know people--by the books they read on the subway and keep upon their shelves sent me back to the books-by-the-foot mavens, who this month are offering a special for would-be wizards.
Off to the Eric Carle Museum today for tomorrow's program; let's hope the weather holds out! [UPDATE: It's not going to. The event has been canceled and will be rescheduled.]
Just read that the multimillion-dollar-lawsuit-inspiring Misha, a Holocaust memoir in which the author claimed to have been sheltered by wolves for a time, has been exposed as a complete hoax. ['nother update: Globe reporter David Mehegan has more on the story.]
I'd like to take a moment to thank HarperCollins for putting a nail into the coffin of a word that's long outlived its usefulness. Explaining their plans to publish a series that will provide opportunities for product placement, Harper children's boss Susan Katz explains:
“If you look at Web sites, general media or television, corporate sponsorship or some sort of advertising is totally embedded in the world that tweens live in. It gives us another opportunity for authenticity.”
So that's what we're calling it now.
My article for the spring 2007 edition of the Journal of Children's Literature - a publication of the Children's Literature Assembly.
good for them. It's common sense that if a word will get a child in trouble in school, it shouldn't be in books either. I doubt any teachers want a student telling them "go to hell"
Well, Anon, there's language I use in school and then there's the language I use "out of school," so to speak. I wouldn't want children's reading experiences to be limited to school settings. I wouldn't want them limited by the language appropriate in school settings, either. I'd like to see people respect children's ability to tell the difference between language they can use in school and the kind they can't. I am confident that they know the difference.
Anon2
Anon1,
It's probably just bait your casting, but I'll rise to it just a bit. The logical extension of your argument is that any language not used in polite adult conversation should also not be used in books for adults. Your line of argument is fouled.
IF
I went to read 6Boxes's commentary. I really don't like the Scholastic book fairs. In the twelve years since my kids started school I have seen them go from mediocre to worse. They push off the cheapest, cheesiest, tacky, vacuous schlock on an audience that--for once in a YEAR probably--has the money in pocket to buy a book.
There's huge social pressure to give your kid money for the bookfair, so parents who would otherwise never buy a book for their kids, cough up the ten bucks. And what can the kids buy with it? Remainders that have sold nowhere else, overpriced pencils, posters, and TV tie-ins.
At the same time that I hate it, though, I have to say--it makes money. 6Boxes laments that Scholastic has a monopoly on bookfairs, but maybe this is WHY they have a monopoly. They don't ever push the envelope. They keep everything mainstream to a fault. When everyone cries out for a book to be included, then they know it is time to add it to the bookfair, but not before.
Anon2
As a Canadian who is often baffled by America’s policy on things like censorship particularly when free speech is in the country’s constitution, I’ll say this, it is up to the individual to put up the good fight. Now your rights Americans then make certain it is upheld.
I agree Roger. The "homosexual content" bit was about the lamest thing ever.
Seconded. Is it "sexual content" if a kid has, well, parents? What about all those books about kids with a baby sibling on the way? Does anyone have a problem with those? I don't think so.
My middle grade novel was considered by Scholastic Book Club-- they wanted me to take out the word "butt," any reference to the girl's period, etc etc. I was mayyybe willing to take out "butt" but come on, getting your period is biology. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life. I see nothing controversial in the Facts of Life.