I wrote not so long ago about why teachers should invite a non-famous author (i.e. me) into their schools. You might therefore think that I have something of a chip on my shoulder. Should you think this, this blog post will do nothing to assuage your suspicions.
I recently read a bedtime story to my three-year-old cousin. She has a shelf in her room positively laden with books, and the book I picked out seemed like a safe bet, written as it was by a famous children's author. And I'm not talking 'well, you may have heard of him/her'; I'm talking full-on 'you have DEFINITELY heard of this person'.
And what a disappointment it was. Facile, platitudinous, sanctimonious and deeply, deeply boring. It is, to my mind, almost certain that this book was not published on merit. It is, to my mind, almost certain that the book saw the light of day purely because the publishers knew that the famous name on the cover would shift copies. And they were surely right: after all, this name was what seduced me into reading the book to my cousin in the first place.
Now, I've no problem per se with famous names being used to market books. I think it can sometimes be a good thing, as I have written about here. The problem arises when famous names become an excuse to publish manifestly rubbish material. In a market that seems very much to have been cornered by a handful of big players, to see those big players produce lazy nonsense is hard for the aspiring author.
But perhaps my tastes and sensibilities are not calibrated properly. Perhaps it is a really good book after all, and I am just a philistine. It is certainly true that my cousin seemed totally uninterested, but this could have been for any number of reasons. I am not going to mention the author by name, as he (there! that's your clue!) is someone I otherwise very much admire. I would merely hazard a guess that I am not the first person to have formed the view that sometimes - dare I say 'often' - lionised children's authors fail miserably to live up to their reputations.
(PS I'm very pleased to have used the word 'lionised'. It is a great word. It always makes me think of someone transmogrifying into a lion.) (And 'transmogrify' is a fantastic word too.)
