CCBC-Net Archives
Books and other Media born from books
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Hollis Rudiger <hmrudiger>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:01:43 -0500
Simon and Shuster has an imprint called Simon Spotlight/Nick Jr, which seems to be about publishing books based on Nick characters, incuding Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues, SpongeBob Squarepants, Bob the Builder, Jimmy Neutron... The amount of books they publish is mindboggling. There is a subset of these books which are Ready-To-Read books, I am currently reading My Visit With Periwinkle, a Blue's Clues Level 1 book,
#7 in the series. It's cute. There are cartoon drawings collaged with photos of people from the show. There are both words and tiny pictures with words beneath that tell a simple, predictable, TV-esque story. Perfect for early readers who, unfortunately, are more familiar with TV characters than anything else. They are inexpensive,(3.99) and quite sturdy for thin paperbacks. Is it Goodnight Mooon? No way. Is the writing memoriable or inspiring? Nope. But will it get kids reading? Will many families and libraries be able to afford them? Probably.
Random House has zillions of Disney books that follow a similar pattern.
Harper has HarperKidsEntertainment. The front page of the Web site has 3 books, a Spiderman, a Van Hellsing, and a Thunderbirds, all 3 books about the movie (of course, they were all books/comics first, but that was last month) You then click on "more" and you get nothing but merchandies for the Series of Unfortunate Events Movie, which isn't even out yet. not even the original books! When you click on a link for Movies and TV, you get Ella Enchanted, Princess Diaries, Stuart Little. When you scroll over each title you get a picture of the movie or TV character. So the print publisher is advertising their books via movies and TV? hey , if it works... But at what point do kids start thinking the TV/Movie version is the "right" one? (I am thinking back to the Little House on the Prairie article that Ruth Gordon posted.) And how do kids separate the book from the movie from the book about the movie, and teh real question, does it matter if what we really value is story
(as said by others)
These are just 3 houses who are absolutely banking on the profitability of multimedia. But given that this is the way it is, what can we be doing in our libraries and schools to profit in our own currency, the currency of literate,creative, thinking kids?
Hollis Margaret Rudiger, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706
hmrudiger at education.wisc.edu Voice: 608&3930 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Wed 21 Jul 2004 11:01:43 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:01:43 -0500
Simon and Shuster has an imprint called Simon Spotlight/Nick Jr, which seems to be about publishing books based on Nick characters, incuding Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues, SpongeBob Squarepants, Bob the Builder, Jimmy Neutron... The amount of books they publish is mindboggling. There is a subset of these books which are Ready-To-Read books, I am currently reading My Visit With Periwinkle, a Blue's Clues Level 1 book,
#7 in the series. It's cute. There are cartoon drawings collaged with photos of people from the show. There are both words and tiny pictures with words beneath that tell a simple, predictable, TV-esque story. Perfect for early readers who, unfortunately, are more familiar with TV characters than anything else. They are inexpensive,(3.99) and quite sturdy for thin paperbacks. Is it Goodnight Mooon? No way. Is the writing memoriable or inspiring? Nope. But will it get kids reading? Will many families and libraries be able to afford them? Probably.
Random House has zillions of Disney books that follow a similar pattern.
Harper has HarperKidsEntertainment. The front page of the Web site has 3 books, a Spiderman, a Van Hellsing, and a Thunderbirds, all 3 books about the movie (of course, they were all books/comics first, but that was last month) You then click on "more" and you get nothing but merchandies for the Series of Unfortunate Events Movie, which isn't even out yet. not even the original books! When you click on a link for Movies and TV, you get Ella Enchanted, Princess Diaries, Stuart Little. When you scroll over each title you get a picture of the movie or TV character. So the print publisher is advertising their books via movies and TV? hey , if it works... But at what point do kids start thinking the TV/Movie version is the "right" one? (I am thinking back to the Little House on the Prairie article that Ruth Gordon posted.) And how do kids separate the book from the movie from the book about the movie, and teh real question, does it matter if what we really value is story
(as said by others)
These are just 3 houses who are absolutely banking on the profitability of multimedia. But given that this is the way it is, what can we be doing in our libraries and schools to profit in our own currency, the currency of literate,creative, thinking kids?
Hollis Margaret Rudiger, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706
hmrudiger at education.wisc.edu Voice: 608&3930 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Wed 21 Jul 2004 11:01:43 AM CDT
