At least let us hope that the downfall of David Walliams – who has been dropped by his publisher, HarperCollins, after an investigation revealed “inappropriate” behaviour towards young women in the company – might signal the end of the relentless rise of the celebrity children’s author.
Walliams, who made his name on the (now almost unwatchable) television series Little Britain, has to date published more than 40 books and sold more than 60 million copies; trade journals report that his titles account for more than 40% of sales of children’s books.
I call Walliams’s unrelievedly clichéd and lazy works “books” with caution. Sixty million copies can’t be wrong, you say? I say that publishers could have put much more energy into promoting good books by actual children’s writers, rather than cluttering up our shelves and utilising their advertising budgets on books for children that may or may not have been written by the boldface names on their covers.
Jamie Oliver, Madonna, Keira Knightley, Keith Richards (really?), Jimmy Fallon, Meghan Markle, Paul McCartney… the argument is surely not that these folk have any special insight into what it takes to write for children, but that stellar monikers will lead parents, carers, aunts and uncles to buy books and boost bottom lines. And lo and behold, that has proven true.
But as Katherine Rundell – whose children’s fantasy Impossible Creatures was Waterstones book of the year in 2023 – has noted, children are discerning readers. “I think what children need most urgently is access to a huge sweep of books, and our current ecosystem of children’s fiction means what is readily available does tend to be the Walliams of the world,” she has said.
There is a reason, I promise you, that the great works of children’s literature – and this includes picture books, of course – endure. This is one of the most challenging genres for any artist to work in; the best children’s books speak not only to the very young but to the older reader who will be turning the pages and reading aloud night after night. They are simple on the surface but extremely sophisticated too. Think of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, Ian Falconer’s Olivia, Shaun Tan’s Cicada, Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea… you will have your own list of the books that transcend any notion of age.
The authors (both writers and artists) behind these books had room to move; freedom to create; were not crowded out by chefs and rock stars muscling in on their game. Walliams’s behaviour must be judged on its own merits, or rather lack of them – but let’s hope this might mark a shift in the industry’s priorities.
Photograph by Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images