Can Adult Authors Be Taught?: Considering the Alternative Celebrity Children’s Book

The title of the New York Times piece is Masters of Prose Warm Up to Children’s Picture Books.  Innocuous enough.  Inside, the article looks at the current spate of authors who normally write for an adult audience but have recently switched their focus to our youngest readers. Jane Smiley, Sherman Alexie, and Calvin Trillin are spotlighted in particular, though they are hardly the first of their kind.  As the writer Alexandra Alter rightly points out, it is far more common for (for lack of a better term) adult authors to write middle grade or YA books for kids.  Picture books take, in many ways, a different set of muscles and only recently have they become quite so popular with writers for adults.

Part of what I liked so much about Ms. Alter’s piece was the fact that it mentions historical precedents. “Writing children’s literature has always appealed to a subset of serious novelists. James Joyce, who wrote some of the most famously impenetrable passages in English literature, wrote two children’s fables about cats for his grandson. James Baldwin, John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut all published illustrated books for young readers.”  To say nothing of poets like Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes.  And so on.  And such.

So why are so few children’s books by adult writers truly memorable?

That’s a rather broad brush to paint with, so I’ll endeavor to explain.  Think about the adult authors you really admire.  Now think about their children’s books, if indeed they’ve written any.  Were they good?  Or merely mediocre?  Chances are, they’re in the latter category.

This is not to say, of course, that an author of adult stories and texts can’t also win big in the children’s book realm.  Look at one of the Newbery winners.  Neil Gaiman is probably the most prominent example of someone who has truly succeeded in the children’s book realm, conquering not just middle grade novels but also early chapter books and picture books too.  But for every Gaiman there’s a Michael Chabon or Alice Walker or Donald Barthelme (I’m looking at YOU, Slightly Irregular Fire Engine).  You love their adult work.  You’re kinda meh on what they do for kids.

A lot of these authors have children of their own, or even grandchildren.  Many create stories for those kids and turn those stories into books.  Jules Feiffer, for example, wrote Bark, George after telling that tale to this daughter at bedtime.  But pleasing your own children vs. pleasing other people’s children?  They don’t always go hand-in-hand.

Here then, is a list of adult authors that I think really and truly got it right.  A hat tip to the books that could have been published, even if the authors had been completely and utterly obscure first-time writers:

The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman

Granted, it wasn’t his first picture book, but I’d maintain it remains his best.  It taps into fears, feeding and allaying them simultaneously.  I suppose he’s always lucked out in his illustrators.  A lovely musical was constructed out of it years ago too.

Thunder Boy, Jr. by Sherman Alexie

The NY Times article is right.  It really is quite good (though he also lucked out on his illustrator).  Little wonder it’s done well since apparently he went through 70 drafts.

Old Possums’ Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot

I still haven’t heard a good reason for why Eliot wrote this.  Before Andrew Lloyd Webber was even a gleam in his grandma’s eye, Eliot penned this lovely, rolicking, quite silly collection.  The later illustrations by Edward Gorey are just icing on the cake.

The Bed Book by Sylvia Plath

I know parents who swear by this book.  Their children won’t go to sleep without it.

13 Words by Lemony Snicket, ill. Maira Kalman

Because technically he was an adult author first, even before A Series of Unfortunate Events.  This is kind of a twofer, since Kalman works primarily in the adult art world as well.  But all I really care about is that they created this great book trailer.

Who’s Got Game: The Ant or the Grasshopper? by Toni Morrison with Slade Morrison

The whole “Who’s Got Game?” series was an original way of reinterpreting the Aesop fables.  I liked Morrison’s style.  Her picture books haven’t always hit it out of the park, but I thought this series had a lot going for it.

And now . . . a list of adult authors I’d really and truly love to see children’s books by, if only because I’m having a hard time imagining how those books would go.

• Zadie Smith
• Salman Rushdie (a picture book – his Haroun books were nice enough but I’d like to see the man go younger for a change . . . and not just in his dates. Goodnight, everyone!  Try the fish!)
• Allie Brosh
• Stephen King (that pop-up book The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon doesn’t count – not really)
• Louise Erdrich (again, younger than her middle grade novels – a picture book would fulfill all my hopes and dreams)
• Gary Soto (because I know exactly what I’m saying)

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