The End of the Children’s Book

That was the headline on a news story on NPRs “All Things Considered” last week.  Oh, no, I thought. Everything, especially it seems about children’s books, is always coming to a cataclysmic end.  I am, frankly, weary of the hysteria. I suppose, too, at the age of 73 and in the latter part of a long career, I feel somewhat insulated against these changes.  My books—some of them, anyway—will probably continue to be out there as long as I’m aware. But does disaster loom for those who follow me?
Once the cry was that with the advent of television no child would ever read again. But now it is that with the advent of e-books, those kids out there who are still, curiously enough, reading will lose their connection to the printed page. “The end of children’s books.” Disaster! The final line in the broadcast, in response to the interviewer’s bemoaning the loss of the tactile sense of the paper book, was “You’ll get over it.” And I thought, Yes! That is, indeed, the answer. We’ll all get over it, and we’ll move on to the next medium that brings us stories and pictures and information. And there will be, as there is in every transition, both loss and gain.

I once knew writers who had difficulty moving from writing by hand to composing at a keyboard, let alone a computer. The feel of pencil and hand against paper, they said, was essential to their creative process. And yet who now doesn’t work on a computer and communicate with editors through the Internet? How often do we hear people bemoaning the “death of the letter,” and yet most of us now communicate by e-mail or Facebook or texting every single day. Isn’t that writing? Aren’t we all doing more of it than we ever did before? What has “died” here? The quill pen and parchment scrolls?

I am a writer. Just that. I communicate with the written word.  I assume that the world, however much it changes, is going to go on needing carefully crafted ideas, information, stories . . . perhaps even mine. And I’m very interested to know what the next bucket that will carry my words will look like.

Transitions are hard. Comfort zones are usually narrow. But a bit of curiosity and openness can carry us a long way.

My business is words, putting them together into stories. Stories, I’m convinced, are here to stay.