Celebrities Who Insist on Writing Children’s Books
Arwa Mahdavi, writing for The Guardian, said this about famous people who insist on writing books for children:
Image ©Brett Jordan, courtesy of Unsplash
If I were queen for the day I’d focus less on white-collar criminals and more on literary ones: implementing an immediate ban on celebrities writing children’s books. Should a famous person so much as think of penning a kids’ book, it’d be straight to jail: locked in a cell full of the strongest-smelling air fresheners available.
Mahdawi writes about how out of control the celebrity children’s book trend is, and how frustrating this is to actual writers who work very hard to write actual books for children. It made me wonder, what is it about the warm, loving glow of our little cottage industry that attracts so many people who really do not know how to write? Because everyone and their brother-in-law thinks they can write a book for kiddies, right? How hard could it be? Just take a weekend, stew in sentiment for a while, add a lashing of nostalgia and surely, a cute little tale will come pouring right out of you.
Problem is, they’re mostly schlock. Problem is, publishers have a hard time resisting the potential dollar signs they come with, if the wannabe writer is already famous. Problem is, writing books for children takes time and work and, if I say it myself, some modicum of talent.
Truth: most celebrity books make me weep for the trees cut down to produce them.
“Childhood is not a prequel to adulthood. It’s an original production with its own thrills and terrors, deities and jokes. The chances of an adult writer speaking this language fluently are slimmer than they are of an adult writer publishing a passable literary novel. It’s an exclusive club. And the majority of these celebrities are standing on the wrong side of the velvet rope.”
Image ©Aaron Burden, courtesy of Unsplash
Mahdawi offers an account of one celeb title, by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, that bombed. I felt at least partially vindicated.
I asked a few writer colleagues what they think of this phenom that refuses to go away, of everyone and their aunty wanting to write a children’s book: here are a few opinions.
Of Jamie Oliver’s crash-and-burn, Martha Brockenbrough wrote:
His publisher should have known better.
Tracey Baptiste wrote:
There are two good things I can say about celebrity books:
1. they make publishers money so they can put out books that are actually good;
2. they rarely last long enough to be on the market to be bothered with.
Cathy Camper wrote:
In one of my zines I reviewed Gold Dust Woman, a Stevie Nicks bio, where she said she was working on children's books. "It's my Zen thing,” she said, "what I do when I really think about what I'm going to do." I added this editorial comment…. “Yeah, and I wear witchy clothes and write big overblown rock ballads when I ride the bus, daydreaming about what I'm gonna do next.”
Sloane Crosley earns my admiration for phrases well turned with her New Yorker article on the celebrity picture book boom. Here are a couple of particularly trenchant examples:
“…having a child qualifies you to write a children’s book the same way that using a toilet qualifies you to be a plumber.”
“It might be more efficient to list the celebrities who have not published a picture book. Childhoods are like opinions; everyone’s got one.”
Writing of C is for Country by Lil Nas X:
“In lieu of a single twist or obstacle, the book champions originality, a virtue it never exhibits.”
Of Sonia Sotomayor’s Just Shine:
A Wikipedia page does not a story make.
Her judgement on the unfortunate celeb trend is wonderfully pithy:
Childhood is not a prequel to adulthood. It’s an original production with its own thrills and terrors, deities and jokes. The chances of an adult writer speaking this language fluently are slimmer than they are of an adult writer publishing a passable literary novel. It’s an exclusive club. And the majority of these celebrities are standing on the wrong side of the velvet rope.
I will reserve my own queen-for-the-day privileges to call out a particular kind of celebrity. I speak of dictators and their stooges, powerful people who have taken time off from ruining the world by dabbling in the creation of children’s books.
Example 1: the late former leaders of North Korea, Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung, daddy and granddaddy respectively of the current ruler of that unfortunate land. This is from an article, also from The Guardian, about the work of Christopher Richardson, who researched North Korean children's literature for his PhD at Sydney University (punctuations edited slightly for North American readers):
Boys Wipe Out Bandits, first published in 1989, is "adapted from a story the Dear Leader 'one day' dreamed up as a child himself," writes Richardson, in which "cultural impurities, capitalist degeneracy, and rampant individualism are defeated by the pure virtue of the collective."
The story sees a vulnerable village – a metaphor for North Korea – surrounded by enemies: "monster-like creatures" whose captain is "ogre-like," writes Richardson, with cysts on his shoulder which "emit noxious gas when pierced." The villagers, in contrast, are "beautifully attired and softly-drawn," and the story concludes as the children punish the intruders with "merciless violence."
Example 2: Kash Patel, current director of the FBI (Yeah, I know, life sounds like a badly plotted novel these days.) who put both his current boss, that is to say, 47, along with himself and several thinly disguised political players (you’ll find some of them making headlines for a range of unsavoury reasons), into the plot of his children’s book about—wait for it—stealing an election!
Schlocky and propagandistic. Now that is an insult to the intelligence of children.
