Copycats on Galleycat
Top o’ the Monday to you. Today my whirlwind DCness winds down. Just a breakfast and a lunch is planned. Maybe I’ll go watch that young man Nick Hornby do his thing. I return tomorrow, but don’t count on anything exciting quite yet. I’ll recount my knife fight with Cornelia Funke and illegal break-ins alongside Judy Blume only when I’m well and truly rested (i.e. the scars have healed).
In the meantime, I think it’s far too late for me to get my grubby paws on a copy of Conn and Hal Iggulden’s Dangerous Book for Boys without having to cough up some cash. Consarn it. Yet I was greatly intrigued by this Galleycat posting last week regarding the book’s copycats. I love when a title with a truly original look gets ripped off almost immediately. I just didn’t expect it to be so blatant.
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Here’s the original:
And here are the overly familiar copycatters:
Here’s the priceless part:
Scholastic is rushing out U.S. versions of British best sellers The Girls Book by Juliana Foster and The Boys Book by Dominique Enright and Guy Macdonald. Publication dates have been moved up from September to August.
Publisher Ellie Berger says the books overlap but cater to the differences in boys’ and girls’ interests. For example, advice to boys is: How to get out of quicksand. For girls: How to make your own luxury bubble bath.
Yep. Because when I’m up to my neck in quicksand, mere moments away from dying a horribly slow death, what I’m really going to be wondering is whether or not I can mix rose water with lilac oil. Sheesh.
And for the record, we already saw this a book that had tips and tricks for super kick-ass girls. It was called Kiki Strike. And it had a more attractive cover than this. I’m just saying.
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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I looked at the table of contents for The Girls Book: it’s not that bad (at least, IMO). There is the bubble bath chapter, but there’s also chapters on how to make a kite, how to improve your memory, how to be a maths magician, how to survive in the desert, how to score a netball goal, etc mixed in with chapters on bubble bath making and ballerina chapters.
I don’t know why certain activities were deemed “boy” or “girl,” but it’s not as bad as the snippet sounds, apparently.
I’m actually really looking forward to the Daring Book for Girls, as Andi Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz have done some kick-ass writings on motherhood (very honest, very real thoughts on how motherhood is seen today). I have high hopes for it.
I had heard of “The Daring Book for Girls” and then I saw copies of “The Girls Book of How to be the best at Everying” and “The Boys Book of How to be the Best at Everything” at ALA this weekend. So blatent. The book will have to be pretty awesome to overcome the cheap copycat stigma.
I guess I should have added that the title of the other Girl book (“How to Be the Best at Everything”) just gives me the shudders. Yeesh. Kelly Herold covered this recently at her blog, too.
shuddering while signing off . . .
I still like the idea that someone had for the “Dangerous Book for Girls.” It’s so subversive. Ideas for chapter headings: How to Organize a School Strike; How to Turn a Barbie-Doll into a Can Opener… you know, stuff like that.
Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the red dress. Red dress now!
Dear Fuse,
I have bad news for you.
Your RSS feed is not working properly.
(a) Only some of your posts are feeding. This one, for example, did not show up in Bloglines. I discovered this because
(b) Only the first three lines of each post are fed. I have the subscription set to read Complete Entries (just as I do for your old digs, where this worked perfectly well) and yet at the end of three lines there’s a …(more)…
Frustratedly yours,
sarah-marie.
A fellow friend of mine reported the same thing. I wonder if this is a flaw in the programming or exactly what SLJ wanted all along. Regardless, I’ll pass on this info to my nice computer fellow. He’ll be able to tell me if this is the norm or an odd weirdness (and here I thought I was out of the woods). *sigh*
poo u
This is a akword bok, and werd
ahhhhhhhhhhhhh it is the worst book ever.it is so stupid
ur right sarah-marie