Kindles are everywhere, the new iPad is out, e-books surge in sales. The good news is that all this gadgetry is not preventing children from reading books, the kind that come with real pages. Reading helps develop young minds, sparks the imagination, and teaches grammar and vocabulary. A new report from the Association of American Publishers, the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry, reveals a mystery for children’s books. Sales for all of calendar 2010 were down from 2009, but children’s books saw higher sales in December 2010 than the prior year. More people than ever are giving children books as gifts in the holiday season.
Paperbacks read by children and young adults saw a healthy increase, up 4.5 percent, to $49 million in December sales. Hardbacks, a more expensive buy for consumers recovering from a recession, were up by two tenths of a percent, to $60 million.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series showed that when children were given books that they enjoyed, with a story, suspense, and fascinating characters, both good and evil, they couldn’t put the volumes down. Harry Potter is now one of the most popular characters of all time — even though Rowling had to approach multiple publishers before one would agree to publish the book.
This month “The Secret of Rover,” another adventure book, hits bookstores’ shelves. Written by Rachel Wildavsky, a local Washington writer, and published by Amulet Books, children (and their parents) are going to snap it up.
“The Secret of Rover” tells the story of David and Katie, left in the care of a foreign spy masquerading as a nanny. Their parents, inventors of a vital classified national security device called Rover, are kidnapped in the made-up country of Katkajan, where they have traveled to collect their new adopted baby sister Theo.
David and Katie overcome the takeover of their house by foreign enemies and imprisonment in a house and a truck. They make a trip to seek a lost uncle and a visit to Washington, D.C., in order to retake their house and rescue their parents and Theo.
The children learn whom to trust, and whom to avoid. It is a suspenseful book, with life lessons, one that children won’t want to put down.
I called the author (full disclosure, Rachel and I are friends) to ask what had prompted her to write a children’s book.
Rachel, a mother of three teens, told me, “I wrote the book because I found that children were reading bad books and were satisfied with them. They were happy with so little. I wanted to provide them with something better.” She explained that she wanted to create normal children with good characters.
Unlike the way many children are portrayed in literature, dreading the arrival of a new sibling, the children look forward to the arrival of their new baby sister. Most books stress enmity between children and new siblings, but “The Secret of Rover” describes the pleasure the children have on the arrival of their new baby.
Further, the book seeks to show the positive side of international adoptions. With women delaying childbirth and having fewer children than in the past, more families are seeking treatment for infertility and turning to adoption, including international adoption.
Many of us have fond memories of the books we read in our youth. They entertained us, and inspired us to be better people. Young people have more toys than ever, but the pleasure of reading remains.
It took Rachel a year to write “The Secret of Rover,” but four years to publish it. Let’s hope that the sequel won’t be so long in appearing, because children need more first-class books to read.
Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
