Stephen Mulvey and Cat Koo write about celebrity children’s books and define them (with help from Maria Nikolajeva) as books “easy for publishers to splash all over the media, but . . . rarely of any literary value.” Their interest in the phenomenon is sparked by the publication of Barack Obama’s Of Thee I Sing. I’m not certain I would put Obama’s book in the same category as Jay Leno’s embarrassing If Roast Beef Could Fly or Jerry Seinfeld’s shameless Halloween. Obama’s gallery of cultural heroes (Georgia O’Keefe, Albert Einstein, Billie Holiday, Jane Addams, Sitting Bull, and Martin Luther King, among others) are presented with imagination and finesse–haikus to creativity, intelligence, and strength of character.
“These are coffee-table books that adults read. I have never yet heard about a celebrity children’s book that really was enjoyed by children,” Professor Nikolayeva notes. “There is lots of discussion about them when they first appear, but three months later they are forgotten. They come and they go. They don’t have a lot of impact.” Guilty as charged when it comes to the Leno and Seinfeld volumes. To Thee I Sing will likely have real traction, as a kind of Profiles in Courage for young children. Many celebrity children’s books are written by hired guns, but Barack Obama’s, presented in the form of a letter to his daughters and dedicated to his wife, looks like the real thing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11764200
If you write a good children’s book you may sell a couple of hundred but not many more. It kind of sticks in my craw when famous people get exposure for their books and sell thousands. Some may be good but certainly not many. My wife Susan Kallander is writing children’s books. Her first book was Up In Smoke and it was published last spring. She is working on a series and we are trying to find a way to improve on the first book. She started writing children’s picture books because she found so many bad ones in the library. She reads to her grandchildren when ever she can but finding a book she considers good enough for them is difficult. There are books with bad words, books to give kids nightmares and books that are just dumb. She won’t get rich writing books but she would like to have her books read by someone other then family and friends. If you’re not famous or have ‘connections’ your books won’t sell.
I suspect that if my daughter was 10 instead of 25, I would buy her Obama’s book. One of the reasons is purely political: We are strong Obama supporters.
As to quality and children’s literature, it’s a serious problem. The yuck books seem to reign supreme these days. Like anything else, a gross-out kids’ book is fun when done right. But oh, the dreck!
Indeed, when starting Enchanted Conversation, we deliberately excluded children’s stories. We love them too much to read submission after submission that condescends to children.