Children’s Books Take a Turn Back to Normalcy

A story making the rounds at this week’s Writer’s Conference in Children’s Literature here went like this: Aspiring author to big-name publisher: “Do you buy books about talking animals?” Big-name publisher: “It depends on what they say.”

But, short of an extraordinary four-footed protagonist, the message from the people who buy manuscripts is clearly that they wish all those animals would just shut up.

Frank Sloan, senior editor at Franklin Watts, rolled his eyes and said, “Whales. Talking whales. I got three of those in one week.”

After a decade or so of obsession with matters of social significance--and with talking animals and other gimmickry at saturation point--editors are talking about literature for its own sake. “We’re getting away from that old problem novel where mother’s a drug addict and father’s an alcoholic,” said Judith Whipple, vice president/publisher of Macmillan Children’s Books. “We were hitting people over the head with them. I think we’re getting back to normalcy.”

Understand, people who publish for the preschool to preteen book-reading audience don’t like to talk trends--”It’s almost a contradiction,” said Linda Zuckerman, executive editor, West Coast, for Harper Junior Books Group--”the ABCs are forever.”

“We try to publish, quote, the eternal truth, enduring values,” seconded Whipple.

Still, this is 1987 and Nancy Drew, now the 57-year-old teen-age creation of a writing syndicate, wears jeans instead of “frocks” and has traded in her roadster for a Mustang. The Hardy Boys? You’ll find them investigating the “Mystery of the Space Shuttle.”

“They’re trying to compete with ‘Miami Vice,’ ” said Stephen Mooser, president of the conference-sponsoring Society of Children’s Book Writers, who deplored what he sees as a violent trend in Hardy adventures.

People had not come to talk about how kids don’t read anymore and point a finger at television. Indeed, said Lin Oliver, executive director and co-founder with Mooser of this writers’ society, TV programs such as PBS’ “The Reading Rainbow “ have boosted book sales.

“The challenge for us as writers,” she said, “is to find ways to pull children into literature,” visually or through the written word.

Sid Fleischman of Santa Monica, author of “The Whipping Boy” and father of Paul Fleischman, also a respected children’s writer, said, “Probably 10% of the population reads a book. The other 90% never did and never will. It’s the same with kids.”

Giving Credit to Yuppie Parents

But publishers are enjoying a boom in children’s book sales despite publishing house mergers, increasing pressures to turn profits and library budget cutbacks--and they give partial credit to the oft-maligned yuppie.

“Yuppies are having kids later and they’re more interested in better books for their children,” said Zuckerman. Whipple agreed: “They want their kids to get a head start.” Thus, there is a proliferation of books for preschoolers and, in Southern California, of children’s bookstores.

Even the ABCs have been yuppified, said Emily E. M. Smythe, co-owner with her husband Michael of the “Happily Ever After” bookstore in Los Feliz. There, one shelf selection--”ABC: The Museum of Modern Art New York”--takes the entire family on a $13 romp from A to Z using reproductions of art works from one of yuppiedom’s favorite citadels. (S is for Soup, as in Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup.)

In an age when even picture books address such nitty-gritty issues as sibling rivalry, bigotry and interracial adoption, teddy bears and friendly monsters and Peter Pan endure.

And dinosaurs. “Kids are fascinated by dinosaurs, absolutely fascinated,” said Steven Kellogg of Sandy Hook, Conn., a celebrated children’s writer-illustrator and creator of “Pinkerton” the problem dog. Having reared six stepchildren, Kellogg should know.

Publishers today “want books that deal with real feelings,” he said. A case in point: His big seller is “Can I Keep Him?” about a boy who wants a pet.

Stereotypes Edited Out

Sexual or racial stereotypes are being edited out. Nevertheless, Frank Sloan said, some die hard--books about ballet and horses still appeal to preteen girls, boys still like sports.

In the ‘70s, picture books broke new ground by addressing issues such as divorce, sex and nuclear fears. Today, these subjects are fairly routinely dealt with, as are AIDS and drugs.

Deplored by some, considered by others a relatively healthy outlet for adolescent girls’ natural curiosity about relationships, is Bantam Books’ paperback series “Sweet Valley High,” which is sort of the romance novel of the junior high set.

But a hard-cover romance novel would have to be “exceptional” to be considered for publication today, Whipple said. “ ‘Do I get to go to the senior prom? Will he ask me? Won’t he?’ That was all right when a book was $3.95.”

Children’s writing has its superstars--Dr. Seuss, still very, very big 50 years after his first children’s book; Judy Blume, who brought a new frankness to writing for youngsters; Beverly Cleary and Maurice Sendak.

And it has its hopefuls. The four-day conference at the Registry Hotel in Universal City drew 250 full-time participants, half of them published. Hoping to break in were those like Cathy Engel-Marder of Los Angeles, a Spanish-English interpreter in the courts. “The courtroom pays my mortgage,” she explained, “but this is my real life.”

Among them were 35 men. “At our first conference (in 1971) one (man) came,” said Oliver. “Then there were three. Then it was the same 11 for eight years. It’s sort of OK now for men to be in things involving children.”

Oliver estimated that only half of the participants have children themselves, but neither did Beatrix Potter and she gave the world “Peter Rabbit.” The group included doctors, child psychologists, a flight attendant, an actor, a former missionary and a private detective.

Helen Hermann of Phoenix, who hasn’t been able to read or write for five years, was there with her guide dog, Cali. Hermann and her husband Bill, a newspaperman who died last year, together wrote “Jenny’s Magic Wand,” a soon-to-be-published story about a sightless child.

The writers quizzed the experts: Is it a good sign if a publisher keeps a manuscript for months? Not necessarily, suggested Eve Bunting, who’s had more than 100 books published--”It may mean that they’re overworked or understaffed, or they’ve lost the manuscript.”

Do writers need an agent? No, said the experts, though agent-screened manuscripts tend to be read first. But, warned Whipple, “an agent isn’t going to place a mediocre manuscript.”

‘Not a Get-Rich-Quick Profession’

“This is not a get-rich-quick profession,” said Oliver in a bit of understatement. An average advance for a first book of middle grade (ages 8 to 12) fiction, noted Whipple, is “somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000.”

And a major publisher typically gets about 10,000 submissions each year and publishes fewer than 100 children’s books.

What’s hot, what’s not? There’s a market for easy-read books suitable for either very bright first graders or slow sixth graders. Young adult novels are hard to place and nonfiction is the “poor stepchild” in today’s market, as Frank Sloan put it.

And whatever happened to Mommy, Daddy and Spot? “That,” said Sloan, “has suddenly become an elitist book.” Now, he said, “people are interested in things like stepparents, second families.”

In a tongue-in-cheek mock editorial board meeting, conference “faculty” discussed the merits of a manuscript about a boy’s trip down the Amazon. Voting thumbs down, Elizabeth Isele, managing editor of the magazine Highlights for Children, said, “Boys today are not so concerned about going down the Amazon as they are the high school corridor.”

For 20 years, Virginia Hamilton of Ohio has dealt in her writing for children with “controversial subjects that are no longer controversial,” such as explicit sex. She says, “I like taking risks.”

But in “The White Romance,” a young adult rock culture novel coming soon from Putnam, one couple is interracial, which Hamilton believes is a first in this field. It “won’t be big in the Orange Counties of America” she said, but “there won’t be the outrage there would have been 20 years ago.”

“Of course,” Hamilton said, “it’s a given that there are always these people who don’t want to read a book with black characters.” Sometimes, she said, “you simply don’t find your books in certain suburbs. I had a teacher ask, ‘Why don’t you get your publisher not to put black faces on your books?’ ”

Censorship by selection is a fact of children’s books. Acknowledging that some in the fundamentalist Christian community “think of the publishers as representatives of Sodom and Gomorrah,” Whipple shrugged and said, “We’re doing a book on evolution.”

Novice writers at the conference brought along manuscripts for private consultation. Whipple, having worked her way through a number, searched her mind for a definable trend and concluded, “Every character in every book I’ve seen is jogging or running.”