The Celebrity Picture Book Boom
There are no guilty pleasures in childhood. It is only as an adult that I feel a certain sheepishness when recalling one of my favorite picture books, “Ann Likes Red,” by Dorothy Z. Seymour, which was originally published in 1965. Wedged between the vaunted volumes of Gorey and Scarry, “Ann Likes Red” stuck out both literally, for its squat stature, and literarily, for its hazy lesson in self-assertion. Ann visits a department store with her mother, where saleswomen attempt to sell her on a variety of dresses and belts. Our heroine rejects every color but her favorite. When a shoe salesman, who has not been privy to the preceding pages, attempts to fit Ann’s foot with a tan sandal, he’s lucky he doesn’t get a kick in the jaw. In the end, Ann tries on her monochromatic outfit before a mirror, looking pleased as punch. It’s a tale of consumerism, superficiality, and petulance. I adored it.
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Well, shame, cast thy gaze elsewhere. The arc-less antics of Dorothy Z. Seymour have nothing on this century’s celebrity-penned picture books, slim volumes that have infiltrated bedroom bookshelves like a pack of moralistic hobgoblins. I do not have children, nor am I a child, so it is not for me to say how many readers were lifted from their pigmented doldrums by Julianne Moore’s “Freckleface Strawberry.” But it is for me to say that having a child qualifies you to write a children’s book the same way that using a toilet qualifies you to be a plumber.
The industry is on a roll. The pandemic and post-pandemic years have seen a spike in narratives from familiar faces such as Serena Williams, Hoda Kotb, and Bette Midler. The actor Max Greenfield is the author of “I Don’t Want to Read This Book” (the word play wears atrophic). The journalist Savannah Guthrie is the author of “Mostly What God Does Is Love You” (not what God mostly does where I come from). Dog-dad Chris Pine is the author of “When Digz the Dog Met Zurl the Squirrel” (short-tailed squirrel befriends dog seeking similar). It might be more efficient to list the celebrities who have not published a picture book. Childhoods are like opinions; everyone’s got one.
Children are not sitting in the bath musing about the P.R. needs that drive celebrities into a publisher’s office. But grownups can do the math. Other forms of supplemental income come at a cost. Brand partnerships are a transparent cash grab. Cameo videos demand the ceding of pride. A children’s book, however, offers the opposite of abasement. It provides protection, allowing famous people to expose their vulnerabilities without being dismissed as self-pitying. They can bolster their own authenticity, crediting themselves with the challenges they faced before we knew them. And, in a culture where every mundane detail of a celebrity’s life is sought, is the fault entirely theirs that these rainy-day projects are up for sale?
These tomes for tots tend to fall into thematic categories, the most prominent being perseverance and individualism. You will know you are reading a perseverance book because it will feel as if it emerged from a human brain rather than a human navel. This is not a condemnation; there are bad brains and there are good navels. But perseverance stories involve moments in which things might not work out, whereas individualism books are less likely to feature their characters, avatars for their illustrious creators, messing up. The protagonists simply exist. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said, “Be yourself, everyone else is not going to be as famous when they grow up.”
There is no means of calculating the number of units moved as gag gifts, but my copy of “C Is for Country,” by Lil Nas X, an individualism book that I got secondhand from a used-book seller, arrived inscribed to Baby Roger. “This guy might be a one-hit-wonder,” our giver scribbles, “but he wrote a song that cracked us up so I thought this book would make your mama smile!” Baby Roger is also informed of his good fortune, for he “has the best mommy and daddy.” Which might be true. They got the book out of the house.
In 2019, Lil Nas X surprised a group of schoolchildren with a live performance of his hit song, “Old Town Road.” What followed was two and a half viral minutes of the kind of shrieking that would send Peppa Pig into a jealousy spiral. It’s hard to envision kids mustering equal enthusiasm for “C Is for Country,” where form overshadows function. “A is for adventure,” “X is for extra” (is it, though?), and “I is for itty-bitty pony,” a presumptuous purloining of “P.” But the real issue is the absence of Plot. A boy rides a horse, eats spaghetti, goes to bed. In lieu of a single twist or obstacle, the book champions originality, a virtue it never exhibits.
Channing Tatum’s “The One and Only Sparkella” is another individualism story, in which the narrator’s peers are turned off by sparkles. Our protagonist, Ella, requests that other kids call her Sparkella, a self-inflicted wound if ever there was one. She dims her light to fit in, eating a sandwich without sprinkles. “The world doesn’t seem ready for me,” she laments. Eventually, “with a little help from her dad,” she learns the importance of being herself. It’s perfectly legal to encourage confidence in children. And who better than a famous actor to insinuate that divergence will age, like a fine wine, into assurance? But the more these authors bang the drum for standing out for standing out’s sake, the more tedious their books become. Rather than being silly, “Sparkella” describes silliness. It’s the illustrated equivalent of Hollywood executives muttering “That’s funny” instead of laughing.
This flaw is also present in directives for authenticity like Matthew McConaughey’s “Just Because,” a whirlwind of unobjectionable truisms (“Just because you threw shade, doesn’t mean I’m out of the sun”), and “The World Needs More Purple People,” by Kristen Bell and Benjamin Hart. Purple people are the best sort of people (somewhere, Ann of “Ann Likes Red” is weeping into a crimson tissue). Their characteristics include using one’s voice, gardening, working “super-duper hard,” being handy, and asking questions befitting a dating app: “Have you ever met a dolphin?” The book is thoroughly executed, positing many routes to cyanosis, but in tackling everything, it grips nothing. I haven’t felt such pressure to be abstractly wonderful since “I Promise,” by LeBron James, in which readers are encouraged to “be a team player and a winner.” Collections of agreeable statements can create a loose sense of camaraderie. But so can watching a stranger with toilet paper stuck to their shoe, and at least there’s a story there.
None of these books lead with “children should be seen and not heard,” because none of them were written by my maternal grandmother. So the question is not “What vile lessons are these famous people propagating?” but “What are they offering instead?” “Peanut Goes for the Gold,” by Jonathan Van Ness, of “Queer Eye,” is also about uniqueness but with a raison d’être. Peanut is perhaps the first nonbinary rhythmic-gymnast guinea pig in literary history. On one level, the book exists for its description. On another, it exists to get kids in the habit of using someone’s preferred pronouns, even if that someone is a domesticated rodent in a leotard. Alas, the innovation ends there. “Peanut has their own way of doing things,” the book states, meaning that Peanut likes doing cartwheels on a basketball court. During a gymnastics competition, Peanut sticks their landing. They get a perfect score from every judge.
It’s illuminating to compare “Peanut Goes for the Gold,” an individualism book, with John Cena’s “Elbow Grease,” a perseverance book. “Elbow Grease” is the story of the smallest truck at the demolition derby. Even with all the gumption in the world, the eponymous Elbow Grease does not win his climactic race. His proffered lesson is more nuanced: “If you only stick with what you’re good at, you’ll never learn anything.” Elbow Grease and Peanut face different challenges: one is waiting for a growth spurt, the other is waiting on the world to change. Elbow Grease has the luxury of setbacks; Peanut needs the win. But all children deserve the pleasure of suspense.
There’s more under the hood in Dale Earnhardt, Jr.,’s “Buster and the Race Car Graveyard,” the platonic ideal of a perseverance book. Buster and his friends are ninety-nine per cent anthropomorphization, one per cent inspiration. Their favorite activities are arbitrarily assigned (telling ghost stories, picking pumpkins). But the descriptions of the graveyard are downright Saundersian. Branches crackle, roots gnarl, dried leaves swirl through the pages. The cars are startled by a ghost car named Brenda (a perfectly imperfect name), who introduces them to other friendly ghost vehicles, most of whom have experienced deadly crashes and now honk funny. The book is about bravery, though there’s a tonal funkiness to espousing the merits of driving two hundred and eighty miles per hour to “ages 4 to 8.” Perceptive parents will know that Dale Earnhardt, the author’s father, died in 2001 when his car slammed into a retaining wall on the Daytona International Speedway. This is a son’s jaunty fantasy of the afterlife.
Such depth is lacking from the actress Eva Mendes’s saccharine “Desi, Mami, and the Never-Ending Worries,” which fits squarely into the subgenre of mental perseverance. Desi has trouble falling asleep because of an endless cycle of intrusive thoughts about monsters. After her mother takes a tumble into existentialism (“What if you tried to separate yourself from your thoughts?”), Desi, like Buster, faces her fears. This book’s rightful home is in the waiting room of a child psychologist’s office, where it should be presented in the same spirit with which Dum-Dums are left in a dentist’s reception area. And yet, we have ourselves a noble motivation, encouraging anxious children to harness the power of their imaginations. “Desi” wants to help. But is that enough?
