41. Celebrity Authors Writing for Kids

It's well-known among children's authors that everybody and their grandmother think they can write children's books. Children's books must be easier to write because they're for less-fluent readers, kids with smaller vocabularies, an unsophisticated audience--right?

Children's writers know that the truth is different--that writing for children is a tough job because children are less patient about trying to see whether the story will improve. Kids want a good story from start to finish. So the stories must be trim, sleek and fine-tuned.

Children's editors generally are a radical bunch who believe that our children deserve only the very best. So the good and even the very good don't make the grade.

And there are a lot of people writing juvenile fiction, so there's a very competitive market. The end result is top-notch quality. From picture books to young adult (YA), juvenile literature is a pleasure to read.

But then there are "celebrity" authors. People who are celebrities first and who decide, hey, why not, I think I'll write a book. And of course, they write for children because they make the mistake of thinking it's easier than writing for adults. And publishing houses snap them up because they've already got a "platform" for selling their books.

We saw Madonna's picture books (about the English Roses) have a brief spurt of publicity and sales and then quickly fade from sight, although she's still publishing more of them. I reviewed her first book for the Marianas Variety (about January 2004, I think). It wasn't as bad as I had feared, but it wasn't good.

There have been others: Paul McCartney, Julie Andrews, Kylie Minogue, Gloria Estefan and Whoopi Goldberg, to name a few. None of these celebrities are playing to their strengths when they write for children.

The one notable exception is Jamie Lee Curtis, who has several baby board books out that have a nice rhythm and rhyme, a sense of story and are good, or possibly very good.

But now we can look forward to another celebrity's book-a YA by Jenna Bush, just sold to a publishing house, according to Publishers Marketplace (requires log-in, so I can't link you to that article). Here's some pre-sale discussion: JennaShopsABook

Beverage Alert: Here's a glimpse (well, parody): Jenna'sTakeOnLife One can only hope Jenna's novel is this well-written! (sigh)