Children's books

My first reaction, on tipping this vast compendium — soaring toward 600 pages — out of its padded bag onto the kitchen table, was straightforward envy at the thought of anyone being paid what, you infer, was quite a reasonable sum of money to spend several years on the intoxicating trail of the children’s book. My second was intense curiosity over the procedural approach employed, which is to say that there are a variety of well-worn pathways into the heart of the genre; it would be fascinating to see which ones Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator in the UK, had chosen to follow. The first path, exemplified by Francis Spufford’s 2002 The Child that Books Built, involves writing a memoir that broadens out into a consideration of the form as a whole.

When you are next visiting a bookstore, and find your way to the children’s section, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is no longer such a thing as a children’s author. Instead, you will be ambushed by piles of books blazoned with the names of actors, singers, comedians, DJs and people who generously exhibit themselves on social media. “Writing” a children’s book has become another string to the celebrity bow. Imagine the scene. You’ve married a prince, and opened a shop that sells vaginal eggs. What more is there to do? A-ha, thinks the celebrity, perhaps while she is sitting on a bench. All those untutored minds, eager for moi! My personal brand will bring them such joy, such self-worth! They will all feel seen!

If you were lucky enough to know Richard Scarry, you might get a postcard from one of the world’s most successful and celebrated children’s book authors. If you were lucky enough to be Scarry’s friend, you might get a letter from Lowly Worm. If you were lucky enough to be a close friend and also a storyteller, you might get advice from the master storyteller himself. I was very lucky to be all three. I met Dick Scarry in 1959, when Dick bought a sailboat from my father in Westport, Connecticut. The two men had become friends based on a love of all things nautical. My father was an artist-illustrator and writer before he gave up the Madison Avenue rat race and opened a yacht brokerage and ship’s chandlery in Westport.

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. For woke children everywhere, the exciting news is that along with the book on Gutsy Women that she has written with her mother, the indefatigable Chelsea Clinton had another book out this year. It’s called Don’t Let Them Disappear and it’s about animals in danger of extinction. A bit big for a child’s stocking, but could be one for under the tree. Last year, it was Start Now!, a guide for juvenile activists wanting to change the world, beginning at home. Before that, Chelsea C. published She Persisted Around the World, about 13 girls who ‘never took no for an answer’. And before that, in 2015, she produced her juvenile activist guide It’s Your World.

Though contemporary Western democracies are clearly marvels by any historical standard, they suffer from one clear, grievous flaw – children cannot vote. Last December the head of politics at Cambridge University invited ridicule when he suggested that this wound required bandages. On his podcast Professor David Runciman mused: ‘I would lower the voting age to six, not 16… it would make elections more fun. It is never going to happen in a million years but as a way of capturing just how structurally unbalanced our democracies have become, seriously, why not? Why not six-year-olds?’ Why not indeed? Why not live in a world where the most effective retail politicians are not Obamas and Trumps, but Barney the Dinosaur and Kermit the Frog?