A Promise Fulfilled

Barbara Saltzman wasn’t really surprised by the response to her book vendor’s booth last weekend at the Anaheim convention of the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children.

“We were mobbed,” she said. “Teacher after teacher came by telling me how much they loved the book and how they had been using it in classrooms.”

So it goes two years after Barbara and Joe Saltzman fulfilled son David’s dying wish: to publish “The Jester Has Lost His Jingle,” the children’s book he began writing and illustrating during his senior year at Yale University.

David Saltzman completed his book--a fable about a court jester’s quest for laughter and his discovery that laughter is hiding within all of us--after he was found to have Hodgkin’s disease.

Saltzman died in 1990, shortly before his 23rd birthday and not long after graduating magna cum laude as an English and art major.

After numerous publishers told his family that a 64-page children’s book was too long, that rhyme didn’t sell and that the book would be too expensive to publish the way they wanted it, the Saltzmans published their son’s book themselves. To fund the project, they took out a loan on their Palos Verdes home.

Released in October 1995, “The Jester Has Lost His Jingle” (The Jester Co.; $20) caught on quickly.

Good Housekeeping did a story on the Saltzmans and their quest to publish the book. So did People magazine and the New York Times. The family also appeared on “Good Morning America,” CNN and several local TV news programs.

By the end of the initial media blitz that December, the Saltzmans had shipped 60,000 copies of the book. By spring, “The Jester Has Lost His Jingle” was on the adult fiction bestseller list of the New York Times--a rare feat for a children’s book. By Christmas 1996, it had made the Los Angeles Times and USA Today bestseller lists.

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Once the limelight fades, most books drop out of sight. But that has not been the case with “Jester.”

Using their three-car garage as their shipping headquarters, the Saltzmans have sold more than 200,000 copies of the book, which went into its fifth printing last year.

“It just keeps building,” said Barbara Saltzman, 57, who quit her job as an entertainment editor at the Los Angeles Times in early 1996 to devote full time to the family-run Jester Co.

“I haven’t looked back since,” said Saltzman, whose husband is associate director of the School of Journalism at USC. Their 33-year-old son, Michael, executive producer of the NBC sitcom “The Naked Truth,” and his wife, Jennifer Glimpse Saltzman, make up the other half of the Jester Co.

Barbara Saltzman, however, is the driving force behind the company, which now produces a Jester and Pharley doll (Pharley is the Jester’s talking wooden scepter).

In keeping their promise to David that they would put the book in the hands of children who most need its uplifting message, the Saltzmans have donated more than 25,000 copies to children with cancer or who have special needs, including patients at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

In September, the Saltzmans donated 1,000 books and 1,000 Jester and Pharley dolls to the Los Angeles Police Department to be given to children in distress. Books and dolls also have been donated to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office for children involved in domestic violence.

Saltzman averages two appearances a week doing readings and discussions in elementary school classrooms, children’s cancer wards, bookstores and libraries.

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She’ll be making presentations in Orange County this weekend and next month.

“I think it’s very important that this book be shared with children of all ages because it has a such a vital message,” she said. That message, she said, “is one of self-empowerment for children.”

“It tells children that no matter what kind of day they’re having that they always have the power in themselves to learn to smile again and not only can they help themselves find their own smiles but they can help others learn to laugh again as well.”

But the book, Saltzman said, offers another important message: “That each one of us has the ability to make a difference in the world. When the Jester and Pharley are on their quest to find where laughter has disappeared, they’re constantly beaten down by the rest of the world, but they refuse to give up.

“That’s one of the reasons I’m so committed to sharing this book and seeing that it’s given to children who are ill or have special needs.”

The book continues to draw accolades.

Stevanne Auerbach, a Bay Area child psychologist, has included the book and the Jester and Pharley doll on her list of the 100 best children’s products for 1997; it is also listed on her year’s 10 best socially responsible children’s products.

This month, the Jester and Pharley doll received an honor award from the National Parenting Publications Assn.

Saltzman said she receives the most satisfaction from doing her readings for kids.

“David will always be a part of my life, but when I share his book with children in particular, I just get a very special joy in seeing how he touches children directly and to see how children respond with such warmth.

“One of the things I like to do when I visit the schools is, frankly, inspire children,” she said. “I like to let them see that books are done by people just like themselves and that they can aspire to be authors and artists and that it just really takes determination and work and that they have to believe in themselves.”

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Upcoming appearances featuring Barbara Saltzman and her son’s book, “The Jester Has Lost His Jingle,” include:

* Sunday, 11 a.m. Story hour at the Jewish Community Center of Orange County, 250 E. Baker St., Costa Mesa. for JLCC members and $7 for nonmembers; free for children accompanied by an adult. (714) 755-0370.

* Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Reading and signing at B. Dalton Booksellers, 2967 Michelson Drive, Irvine. (714) 261-5158.

* Dec. 17 and 21. Readings at Barnes & Noble in MetroPointe, Costa Mesa. The Jester Co. will donate one copy of the book to Children’s Hospital of Orange County for every one the store sells. (714) 444-0226.