There’s a myth that lots of us fall for/ ‘Kids’ books are so easy to write’/ And you can see why we might think so/ As so many of them are shite.
Little poem by me there. As the dad of a six-year-old and a three-year-old, I have spent perhaps 100 hours reading some wonderful books, and hearing gorgeous books read to me. But parents everywhere will know what I mean when I say: Christ there’s a lot of dross out there. Why are so many children’s books so bad?
Children learn through books. If they read lazy poetry, they’ll become lazy writers and lazy thinkers
While looking for kids’ books to name and shame for this piece, I realised that some of the very worst offenders are now in a charity shop or the bin. But plenty remain: rhyme schemes that evaporate into thin air; books with scansion that is forced to the point of agony; or passages that don’t even attempt to work, their authors hoping that plonking a rhyme at the end will suffice (I’m looking at you, Quentin Blake).
Take this example by the normally reliable Julia Donaldson. Say what you like about Donaldson’s vice-like grip on the children’s publishing industry: she knows how to write a good rhyming book. I could only find an example of bad scansion in A Squash and a Squeeze: ‘And now she’s full of frolics and fiddle-de-dees/ It isn’t a squash and it isn’t a squeeze.’ Second line great. But look at the first one. That’s insane. Anyone involved in the publishing of the book would know it was insane if they just read it aloud.
Almost anything would scan better: ‘And now she’s a happy old lady’; ‘And now she’s as happy as happy can be’; even ‘And now she is full of fiddle-de-dees’. But who lets the published line slip through, knowing that it could only possibly work if you forced yourself to say: ‘And now SHE’S full of frolics and fiddle-de-dees’?
Blake might be a wonderful illustrator but should he have been allowed to publish Angelica Sprocket’s Pockets in his seventies? I’m all for a tale about a mad old woman with weird stuff coming out of her massive coat, but rhymes like the following make it impossible to enjoy: ‘There’s a pocket for mice/ And a pocket for cheese/ And a pocket for hankies in case anyone feels that they’re going to sneeze.’ What is going on there? How about: ‘There’s a pocket for ice cream/ And all kinds of nice things to drink/ There’s a pocket for saucepans and frying pans and buckets and spoons and forks and cheesegraters and the kitchen SINK.’ Let’s skate over ‘And all kinds of nice things to drink’ – good God – and look at the final line, which is a rare example of an author having to capitalise the rhyme because the line started so long ago the reader has forgotten what was going on then. You could say this is a novel, post-modern approach to the conventions of children’s poetry. But really it’s just an octogenarian making a list of things he can see in his kitchen.
In a book like Go the Fuck to Sleep – which, I should stress, I have not read to my daughters – there’s a stanza that reads: ‘The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest/ And the creatures who run, crawl, and creep/ I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying/ Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep.’ All fine until the last line. Again, you only need to read it out loud to know that. You could have ‘Lie the fuck down, darling, and sleep’; or ‘Lie the fuck down, dear, and sleep’; or ‘Lie the fuck down, darling, sleep.’ The only combination you can’t have is the one that is in the book.
I suspect the problem has got worse in recent years, mainly because the phenomenon of ‘celebrity children’s author’ is one that is still relatively new. This is not to let older children’s literature off the hook – there are plenty of dodgy, racist old kids’ books out there – but no one is lazier than a famous person trying to get richer by writing a kids’ book. And as well as talented writers being overlooked, the era of the celebrity kids’ author may be dragging down the quality across the board.
Returning to my stanza at the beginning, the problem is that authors think they can get away with rubbish rhyming and sloppy scansion because they see so many other people getting away with it. They see a book like 101 Bums – ‘Some bums are rather crazy/ Some are very lazy/ And this one’s very, very, very tall’ – and think: ‘Ah, OK, so you don’t actually need to be able to write in order to publish a children’s book.’ I shudder to think of the number of people currently writing children’s books with ChatGPT – something that, if I were prime minister, would warrant the death penalty.
It’s obviously a sad state of affairs. And it’s harder to call out kids’ books for being awful because it feels like trampling on flowers, to some extent. But I think there’s a case to be made that naming and shaming bad children’s writing is more important than doing the same for adult fiction. Perhaps bad children’s books are particularly offensive for the same reason that good ones are particularly beautiful. Children learn through the books they read. If they read lazy poetry, they’ll become lazy writers and lazy thinkers. There are so many fabulous children’s authors with an ear for poetry – I’d recommend Lynley Dodd in particular – but while reading these books I’ve been able to tell that the authors have thought: ‘Yeah, that’ll do.’ Do they ever read their writing out loud? Or do they not have time because they’re too busy plotting their next mediocre book?
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