Must They Be Funny?

"Must they be funny?"  It's what Shonna McNasby asked following my last blog.  And her thoughtful question calls for a response.
Shonna also said, "I am an aspiring author of picture books, and what I write, I’m told, is rather quiet and sometimes sad. Everywhere I look there are hilarious picture books, (which I do love), and I just saw a notice in SCBWI about a publisher who just can’t find enough, and is hosting a competition to find more.

"Of course this bothers me as a writer, but it also bothers me on a basic human level. I think we need books that mirror a complex range of emotions, regardless of age. I hope books about loss, anger, and sadness continue to emerge because we can’t stop needing them, whether they’re on trend or not."

And yes, of course, she is right.  We do need books that touch a wide range of emotions, every emotion we are capable of feeling, in fact.  That's why we read stories at any age, to affirm our own humanity, to recognize our most private experience in another.  And young children experience as wide a range of emotions as the rest of us.  In fact, they probably feel more deeply than you and I because they are less well defended against their feelings.

With picture books, however, there are hurdles to be gotten past if we start reaching uncomfortably deeply into the well of human experience.

The first is that most adults want, understandably, to protect children from pain . . . all pain.  Even in the form of story.  This is especially true with very young children.  And picture books always have two audiences, the adult who selects and reads the book and the child who receives it.  Getting sadness, in particular, past the protective adult can be a great challenge.  (One could ask whether we are really protecting children or ourselves, but that's a matter for another discussion.)

The second is that everyone is having a hard time selling picture books these days.  I'm not talking only about us writers having difficulty selling our manuscripts, but about the publishers, as well, which is the cause of our trouble.  One hears various reasons for the fact that picture books aren't selling as well as they once did--one of which is, no doubt, that too many are being published, a difficult truth for writers to acknowledge—but we're told they aren't.

Publishing is a business.  If businesses don't make money they don't survive.

Thus, everyone is looking for the book that will leap off the shelf, that will command instant attention.  And funny does that more easily than anything else.

That doesn't mean everything else will be left out, but "too quiet" seems to be the code word these days for, "We just can't count on enough sales to risk this one." 

One of my favorites of my own picture books is The Longest Night, published by Holiday House.  It is lyrical with stunning illustrations by Ted Lewin.  It is also the epitome of quiet.  It was, as my editor, Grace Maccarone, recently explained to me, a literary success but a commercial failure.  I can't earn a living on commercial failures any more than publishers can.

What's the solution?  Well . . . an obvious one is to write funny if you can.

Unfortunately, funny—good funny—is really, really hard to do.

And if you can't write funny?  Or if you have something to say that simply isn't funny?  Then the old advice stands.  Write what's in your heart.  Write what moves you.  Write what you believe will touch a child in a deep and genuine way.  And whether it's "on trend" or not, some of those manuscripts will slip through and find life as books.

And some of those books may even sell!

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