A
strange and rare thing happened the other day: a real live child was
seen in the offices of a children's publisher. Little Louis wasn’t
there for an editorial meeting or to discuss the cover design for our
latest series. Actually he spent the whole time wriggling around and
trying to ingest staples. But his presence did start me thinking about
the adult-filled world that is children’s publishing.
If kids were running our publishing house, lift-the-flap books
wouldn’t be about finding the fat controller, they’d be about finding
the hidden chocolates; Miffy would hand out free ice-creams instead of
playing peek-a-boo; and Zac Power would take you on his thrilling
missions and then give you his iPod to keep.
Kids can’t make all the decisions, not least because every day would
be spent at the zoo or on the computer, each meal would begin with hot
chips, and bedtime would never, ever come.
There’s nothing radical about an industry run by one group for
another; children’s publishing isn’t unique in this way. Pet food is
not made by or marketed to our furry friends—although a feline-run
factory (powered entirely by the underclass that is the canine species,
of course) would be very clean. The managers would spend the day dozing
in the sun and hissing when anyone came into the office.
Of course kids' books need to be made by adults. But this inevitably
gives rise to a certain generational tension. We were all kids once,
and most of us like to think that it wasn’t such a long time ago. More
to the point, most of us like to think that kids today are just like we
were—only with better computer skills and worse table manners.
It’s
understandable, then, that children’s publishing is often fuelled by
nostalgia. There’s something very reassuring about the idea that what
we loved to read will still appeal to kids now. Choosing a brand of
food for our pets is less fraught—if any of us were dogs in past lives,
most of us can’t recall it—and we are going to make a more or less
rational decision based on price, ingredients and the cuteness of the
ad.
Does
it really matter that I was a kid before googling was a daily
addiction, when terrorism was what the boys did in class when the
teacher wasn’t looking, and a treat was a carob-coated muesli bar? If I
loved the adventures of Enid Blyton and the poems of AA Milne, why
shouldn’t my child also exclaim raa-ther at opportune moments
and giggle at the idea that James James Morrison Morrison