Focus: It’s Not as Easy as It Looks, Part 2.

Cooper, Ilene (author).

A number of years ago, I wrote an article for Booklist pondering the reasons behind the outpouring of children’s books by celebrity authors and questioning the ability of most celebrities to write for children. Alas, my trenchant comments weren’t enough to discourage the practice. Celebrity-authored books continue to flourish like weeds (or, in one case, English Roses), absorbing much of the sunshine that other books more justly deserve.

There’s no real surprise about why publishers often go this route. Big names attract big publicity. Billy Crystal can promote his book as the host of the Academy Awards, a show seen by a billion or so people around the world. Jay Leno is welcome to push his childhood memories on perhaps every talk show but David Letterman’s.

Yet the fact remains that whatever considerable ability these celebrities have in their respected fields, it usually doesn’t translate into the very precise talent of writing engaging books for children. Take Billy Crystal’s I Already Know I Love You (please, ba-ba-boom!). It’s hard to find anything that’s right with this book. Written from the viewpoint of a prospective grandfather, the story has an immediate audience problem. Of course, the idea is that young children will identify with a grandpa who is waiting to share his passions, such as baseball. But the mood and sentiment are strictly from the grandfather’s perspective; it’s all about him, not what might interest the child.

Perhaps the foundation might have been made more kid friendly with a clever text. Instead, Crystal, who everyone knows can be hysterically clever, offers this: “I’m going to be your grandpa! / I have the biggest smile. / I’ve been waiting to meet you / for such a long, long while.” The rhyming becomes quite unbearable. Grandpa wants to show his granddaughter the moon and laugh like a goon; he wants to hear her sighs and show her clowns that cross their eyes. Sometimes even a one-syllable rhyme is too tough: “I want to show you the wind / and how it bends the grass. / I’m waiting to give you bear hugs—/ the kind that last and last.” We can’t blame Crystal for the artwork, but suffice it to say it doesn’t rescue the text.

The artwork in Jay Leno’s If Roast Beef Could Fly, is the best part of the book. Featuring a young, lantern-jawed Jay, the energetic watercolors capture the quirks and quibbles of Leno’s extended family. To Leno’s credit, he at least attempts to tell a story. Jay’s father, an extravagant Italian, does everything on a large scale, and when he decides to build a patio with a barbecue, the project takes on a life of its own. Desperate for a taste of the roast beef sizzling on the grill, young Jay uses his plastic comb to scrape off some meat; then his comb gets stuck in the roast. There are some laughs, but like Jerry Seinfeld’s 2002 book Halloween (by the same packager), a childhood memory is recounted with no particular regard for the intended audience. Just because something happened to the author when he was a child doesn’t necessarily mean the incident will translate into a story that will interest children.

Some publishers admit that celebrity books are little more than loss leaders; they get buzz for the company but often aren’t worth the huge outlay in advances big names demand. And when there is a celebrity book on the list, it tends to suck all the air out of a publicity department. Often understaffed, these departments need to spend great quantities of resources and energy on the care and feeding of celebrity authors. With only so much time and money to go around, writers who really need (or deserve) the attention are shut out.

On the other hand, some publicists say there’s an upside for every book on their list when a celebrity author signs on. If the celebrity’s book is a success, the profits can be used to nurture other, lesser-known writers. And a smart publicist can parlay the doors that open for celebrities in the mainstream media into opportunities for other authors on whom those same doors might otherwise be slammed.

Publishing proponents of celebrity books will also caution about lumping the whole galaxy of stars together. There are some successes—a few Jamie Lee Curtises and John Lithgows—in the pantheon. On the other hand, there is also Vince Gill (the jacket of his 2004 book reads The Emperor’s New Clothes as Told to Vince Gill). Jane Seymour and James Keach star in their own books as cats named Lady Jane and Big Jim. And don’t forget LeAnn Rimes, whose skills as an author are apparently so weak that someone else gets a “story developed by” credit on the cover of her 40-page book.

But if these celebrities must write, the least they can do is keep their mouths shut about the rest of children’s literature. In a 2003 article in the U.K paper The Guardian, Madonna informed an interviewer that she was virtually compelled to write children’s books because everything out there was so shallow. Now that she has her own children to read to, she “couldn’t believe how vapid and vacant and empty all the stories were.” Poor Madonna. She must have gotten lost in the celebrity-book aisle.

Titles Discussed:

Crystal, Billy. I Already Know I Love You. Illus. by Elizabeth Sayles. 2004. 32p. HarperCollins, $16 (0-06-059391-1).

Leno, Jay. If Roast Beef Could Fly. Illus. by S. B. Whitehead. 2004. 32p. Simon & Schuster, $17.95 (0-689-86767-0).