Editorial 125: November 2000
True originality in literature lies in the writing and this is as true of children’s literature as of adults’. We can add, since we are talking about children’s literature, that true originality can also lie in the illustration. Has this book, of whatever kind, something original to say? Does it say it in an original way? With more than 8,000 new titles for children published in the UK alone each year, originality is no small thing and landmark books few and far between.
These days, however, originality and quality (an individual voice, effortless command of narrative or structure, technical bravura, delight in language, a grasp of the chosen genre, a sense of audience, humanity and so forth) are no longer enough. As the balance of power in the publishing industry has shifted to the marketing department, poets have also to be good performers of their work, while writers have to be good looking, have an interesting background and be dressed by Oswald Boateng or Nicole Farhi. Aristocratic connections or their converse are preferred.
I exaggerate wildly to make a point. However, I am also unable to forget acquisition meetings at the last prestigious publishing house I worked for where ability to perform if you were a poet could mean the difference between publication or non publication. This is truly the book as commodity with the writer or poet or illustrator needing to display celebrity lifestyle potential in the intense competition for marketing resources and thereby, cultural attention.
But what of the writer or poet who cannot perform in schools or speak at conferences, who would sooner die than be an artist-in-residence or read their work in a station, prison or supermarket? Can their books be allowed to speak for those to whom a road show is anathema?
As Margaret Meek puts it in her article in this issue of BfK , ‘Adults Reading Children’s Books’: ‘Happy the writer whose editor is the friend of the text rather than a representative of the finance department concerned with “what the market will stand”.’
