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I love reading the always insightful, always laser-bright and informed Katie Roiphe.

1. http://www.doublex.com/section/life/get-your-kid-your-facebook-page

2. http://nymag.com/news/features/2007/sexandlove/30928/

3. http://www.aaets.org/article137.htm

Hope this isn't too much BSP, but I said exactly this same thing as you in a blog post 2 months back:
http://www.adlit.org/mashup/30894

Roger, I'm not sure we read the same article. Sure, you can selectively pick out some hand-wringing here but it largely supports your assertion that YA readers love their sturm und drang.

As for kids and adults reading for the same reasons, yes, maybe, if you're talking about recreational reading. But literate adults don't worry about decoding, as the newest readers do, and they are seldom called upon to read aloud, and they aren't assigned book reports, nor are they tested on what they've retained. Reading can be a lot more stressful for kids, and I don't say that as an indictment of schools, just as a simple fact that helps explain why children's books have always carried a much heavier load than books for adults.

Well, Roiphe is talking about recreational reading, too, as far as I can tell. My point is that this is a trend piece that, held up to the light, demonstrates no trend.

Ah, the good old WSJ. If the popular books are dark, they're ruining our kids. If the popular books are fluff like GOSSIP GIRLS, that's bad too. Guess the kids should just read the classics . . . oh, but those are mostly dark too (My 8th grade daughter's school reading included OF MICE AND MEN and ANIMAL FARM) . . . maybe they shouldn't read at all and just watch Nikelodeon.

The fact is, if there's nothing to complain about, there's no news. And the WSJ is a newspaper, not People magazine. So, really, the fact that the WSJ is even writing about YA literature shows that it is important and newsworthy. Rejoice.

Alex, I can't. It just gripes me so much whenever the NYT or WSJ write about my field and reveal how completely shallow their understanding of it is. Maybe the reason it upsets me so much is the way it implicates how little they probably know about any other field. Sigh.

Well, you know the saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity . . . as long as they spell your name right. A few years ago, some writer came up with a whole BOOK about how YA literature her kids were assigned in school was too depressing (It got a LOT of press, so I think it's interesting that I can't, for the life of me, recall or even FIND the title on Google). She mentioned my novel Breathing Underwater, but referred to it as Breathing Lessons (the title of a Pulitzer-prize winning adult novel by Anne Tyler), leading me to believe she probably hadn't actually read it before declaring it too dark. I wrote to the publisher to request a correction. If I'm going to be maligned, I want my title spelled right!

Last time I looked, my book, and others like it, were still selling.

Alex Flinn,

NO. BAD. I am tired of the complacent acceptance of anti-intellectualism and ignorance in public discourse, and I refuse to look on the bright side of it. So there.

Harrumph.

Alex--Welcome to Lizard Motel, Barbara Feinberg

Yep. Lizard Motel. Thank you.

Wow, that must be the last time Elise Howard actually read any books (judging by that wonderful series she published R U One Too). It frightens me that Harper has people like her in positions of authority.

Elise has a great essay in the upcoming Horn Book about her experience as editor of The Graveyard Book.

Super-duper, Roger! I saw it here first, because I haven't gotten my Sunday Times yet. Thank you!

Well, I question your patriotism.

Who do you suppose REALLY wrote that book? My hunch is, someone on the White House publicity staff. (Not Harper editorial or promotion folks - they would know better. Must be wincing now.)

So much for MY patriotism. Thanks for a great review!

No, they wrote it--Laura said they thought about it for a long time and then sat down and wrote the thing in twenty minutes. I remember Bill O'Reilly saying Madonna couldn't have written The English Roses, but, as there, I don't understand why everyone thinks writing a bad picture book is difficult. It isn't.

I think they wrote it in less than ten minutes. Did you read that thing- I won't qualify it as a book? Harpercollins-LOL! Shame on you!

Shame on Harper indeed--but it IS #1 on the NY Times bestseller list and that is all the Game now. Sigh

By the way,I thought they said it took them 45 minutes to write. I see they were exaggerating.

Jane

I don't think this is a shame-on-Harper moment--is there a major publisher out there who would have turned this down? Except when publishers eat their own (like Harper commissioning the colorized Charlotte's Web, or Random House's collection of truncated picture book classics) I think blame should stick to the authors, so shame on Laura like white on rice.

Amen, Roger. Amen.

I don't understand.

Why would two people who presumably know better produce a book like this? Do you think they were constrained by expectations? Suppose they had produced a competent but uninspiring rehash of Where the Wild Things are-- the typical Billy had a bad day, but he's better now Book. It might have gone to the top of the list driven by celebrity and marketing, but buying it wouldn't have been an affirmation of right-mindedness, a badge of honor. It just would have been a book. But THIS, this isn't a book you are buying but a token of your membership in the Literacy Party. Did it have to be bad in order to count? So heavy handed so that grown-ups could buy into it?

Would Harpercollins have pushed for just this kind of book because everybody who claims to believe in Literacy has to buy it?

Or is it that the book isn't actually for children but for adults who need to be convinced that reading is important for their children. So many picture books seem to be parenting lessons in disguise, like the TV show Caillou. Adults are so much denser than children, you have to be really heavy handed to get the point across?

I'm clutching at straws, maybe, but I'd like to know why this sort of thing happens so often.

h

It seems odd to me that no one has yet asked: "How much was the ADVANCE?"

The market for celebrity-author picture books is almost always parents and other end-consumer adults. Such books have little traction in the school-and-library market and little kids themselves have zero interest in who wrote a book. I think they're mostly aimed at people who don't read but think that reading is a virtue they should inculcate in their kids. The celebrity authorship provides a comfortable reference point, and because these consumers equate reading with school, they think there should be lessons.

So you think they couldn't successfully have written anything else? If they had written a book that would have appealed to readers/librarians, it wouldn't have sold well enough to justify the costs?
h

It may not become a bestseller but it is nonetheless a real investment for the publisher. The authors get a whopping advance, which will presumably be donated with appropriate fanfare to a well publicized charity.
And the agency, in addition to the fee, solidifies its relationship with a major publisher and potential clients.

I’ll bet that the book is at least as bad as RS’s review indicates but let’s not pile on. It’s not the first time that good intentions and belief in a worthy effort (and we can at least give them that, yes?) have clouded authorial talent and judgement. Often enough, the more noble the cause, the worse the prose.

Roger notes in his review, " ...no librarian! In a book promoting the joy of reading, this, my friends, is low."
It's ironic that the Bush administration's unfunded NCLB mandates is making this very nearly true. Thank goodness for moms with the stamina to push back.

Anon@2:37

I didn't mean to pile on. I am not interested in bashing the Bushes. As you pointed out, this isn't the first time people have poured heart and soul into something that turns out heavy handed and soulless. I just wonder why that happens. And why people, who should be able to see that something has gone wrong, can't.

I bought the Bush book and read it with my son. He said, "Papa that book is by the President's Wife. It should have been really good!"

Then we went back to Prince Caspain. Thank goodness Harpercollins has a Backlist!

A.D.

On LARRY KING, Larry asked the Laura and Jenna how old Tyrone, their main character was. I was appalled that Jenna, a former teacher, doesn't know age ranges. This is from the transcript:

KING: How old is he?

(CROSSTALK)

L. BUSH: Second grade.

J. BUSH: So he's about nine or 10, eight or nine.

I hated the book, but I'd totally forgotten the reference to the library pages. Along with being offensive and totally unnecessary, put using the term "pages" in the category of "words kids wouldn't use."

I've also wondered at the choice of name for the main character, Tyrone. What's up with that?

I was reading somewhere a discussion of the Bushes' choice of "Tyrone," with several commentors querying why she gave a "black" name to a white character, and others countering that Tyrone is actually Irish. But BabyNameFacts.com confirmed what I had suspected, that, black or white, guys named Tyrone are far more likely to be pushing forty than nine--it's getting into dog-name territory, like Roger.

Well, 69 million users can't be cool -- whoops, I meant, can't be wrong.

I love how Facebook deserves the tag "Intercultural understanding."

We in the younger generation aren't that foreign, are we? I mean, the thought makes me ROTFL, because I haven't facebooked in a minute. But then I thought "whatevs" because I needed to check my wall. I know, right? Peace in the Middle East, Ro.Sutt.


(Ack. I'm a poor example of the younger generation. I had to research slang.)

Roger, I just became one of your Fans on Facebook. I would also like to make everyone aware of two more great networking sites for children's book authors: JacketFlap.com and Yahoo Group childrenswriterstoday.

Scott O'Dell and Hans Rey are still making big bucks for the Irish company that now owns Houghton-Harcourt

I'd really like to see more on this. It's a subject that has gripped my mind of late (because at some point it's going to be my books facing down that uncertain fate).

Fawn-like naivete? More like Bambi's mama.

O'Dell/Rey: just an example. I assume this is what you mean?

...have our expectations of a "normal" literary lifespan changed?

I fear they have, yes. I am currently working on British publishing of the 1960s and 1970s, and I'm very struck by the insistence of Kaye Webb (of Puffin Books) on the notion of children's books as a long-term investment. She talks about nursing a book for five years in order to get 15 years of sales. Many of the books produced under her editorship are still in print, but I do doubt whether publishing houses today would be prepared to wait that five years!

Sell and Drop:

In a recent conversation, an editor commented that seldom are books remaindered any more. Instead, print runs are much more modest. And when a book doesn't sell quickly enough, then it falls prey to the Sell-and-Drop. When the current printing is sold out, the company drops the title--no reprints.

Oddly, I'm seeing some of my picturebooks doing well overseas and that income keeps it going. For example, 19 GIRLS AND ME (Philomel) does well here, but sales in Egypt have been very strong. The German version just came out and is doing well, too.

Darcy Pattison
www.darcypattison.com

As a reader, I know I have more trouble reading a book that doesn't feel relavent. Which seems to be any book printed more than 15 years ago.

Looking at YA fantasy books, which is my main area of interest, I think we see a little bit better backlist, becuase the books aren't so quickly dated by slang and popculture. Reading modern YA though, those books will be dated in a few years. Who talks about Leonardo DiCapario as their ideal boyfriend any more?

So I think part of it is, readers love pop culture in their books, because it helps them relate to the characters. But those same references then date the book very quickly.

Also, on the first in a trilogy being dropped... I don't feel like I see that very often, in ya fantasy at least... though if the first book wasn't popular, the rest may just come out with very little fan fare.

http://www.yafantasy.com

An observation I made a few weeks ago....

I was in my son's elementary school library. At the back, there are the shelves of sets of books used in classroom work - the books that are set reads, that they keep 20-30 of on these shelves.

The majority (>75%) of them were so old*I* remembered either from my own childhood or from my time after college when I was the kids clerk at a large soon-to-be-national-chain bookstore (back when said soon-to-be-chain still had employees dedicated to each section who knew the sections well).

I know that schools and teachers tend to be conservative with book choices. But looking at what was there, I can see why so much of it was backlist material (all the choices are still in print). They're readable, literate, standalone stories.

I grew up as the kind of reader who devoured everything my library had to offer. I still read J and YA fiction pretty regularly. And so much of it is so - ephemeral. Walk into the National Chain Bookstore Branch nearest me, and what do I see? Ten bad imitations of Harry Potter, Three bad imitations of Unfortunate Events, seven spin-offs of Little House, and five repackaging-into-smaller bites of the childhood classics of yesteryear. The rest? "Volume 20 in the Time-Traveling Dinosaurs series: Viking Pirates Pillage Ancient Rome!" pretty much sums it up. The few gems are difficult to find in bookstores that sort books not by author but by tiny sub-genres or "Finished Harry? This is just like it!

And so much of it is unmitigated crap. Sentences dumbed down by using thesauri, bad plotting, insulting failures in logic, annoying Deus ex machina in place of solid plotting.

I'd bet that a larger percentage of children's books published 25 years ago are still in print than of those published 5 years ago. Most of today's books seem rushed to market to capitalize on some currently perceived trend, or worse yet, written by a committee of uninspired Ed.Ds (who are not, themselves, readers) as a quick response to that trend.

Gosh, I sound like an old fart, don't I? LOL! I'd better just go finish reading "Miss Bianca" to my 7 year old. Full of big words, but somehow he loves it anyway.

I also wonder, with the plethora of published books, how much attention is paid to getting word of mouth and not relying on reviews or a publicist who may well be overworked in trying to get every book recognition.
@Sara: It seems to be a case of "if the shoe fits, then copy it ad infinitum". It may only change of the general public stops buying it - chicken and egg.

www.yatterings.com

When publishing companies become subdivisions of giant media conglomerates it isn't only, as you rightly suggest, that the top decision-makers are very far away from the books being produced.

It also creates an environment where there's a constant loss of institutional memory: if the publicity department has 100% turnover every three years, the older books aren't remembered when opportunities arise for their reintroduction in association with new releases, in press interactions, etc.

Editors who move from house to house leave behind dozens of books every time they go. Without someone to remember, let alone defend them, those books slip into back-of-the-backlist oblivion.

Combine that instability with corporate budgetary imperatives (of warehouse efficiency, for example, or overall debt reduction) and you create a set of conditions strongly biased against long life for midlist titles.

That having been said, some publishers are way better about keeping backlist available than others. In my experience, companies with an inclination to the school & library market are slower to eliminate titles than the biggest commercial houses.