Keira Knightley is the latest in a long line of celebrities to turn their hand to writing a children’s book. “I Love You Just The Same” which also features illustrations by the British star, is due to be published by Simon & Schuster next October.
“Am I bitter? Is the only thing in my fridge sour grapes?” said David Barnett in The Independent. “Well, sort of, yes.” As the author of 14 novels, seeing Knightley’s book being picked up by a major publisher with “great fanfare and endless headlines” is frustrating.
‘Plotless monstrosities’
“I have no direct beef with Knightley”, wrote Barnett, and it’s “unfortunate” that she’s the “current celebrity author target” in the never-ending “grudge match between jobbing writers and famous people who write books”. But her experience is “vastly different” from the authors “toiling away in the word trenches every day”. What “rankles” with many of us is the “whirlwind of promotion” celebrities’ books are treated to; the type of marketing budgets we can “only envisage in our wildest dreams”.
Knightley’s debut book, which tells the story of a young girl adjusting to life with her new sibling, explores themes of separation anxiety and resilience. Apologies for “pre-judging” but her “noble intentions” remind me of that other “great literary atrocity” – Meghan Markle’s “The Bench”, said William Sitwell in The Telegraph. “Unfortunately, it became a bestseller, giving other celebrities encouragement to pen their own children’s books. To which, I say, leave it to the experts.”
The “celeb-to-author pipeline” is “nothing new”, said Ella Creamer in The Guardian. From Julie Andrews to Madonna, stars have been bringing out children’s books for decades. Today, though, authors’ incomes are dropping while the “non-celeb side of the playing field” is being steadily eroded.
“In many ways, children’s books are the most important section of literature,” said Philip Womack for The Spectator World. Studies have shown time and again that reading at a young age has an array of benefits from expanding vocabularies to improving cognitive skills; well-written children’s books “lay down the groundwork for a happy, successful adulthood”.
But celebrities’ efforts tend to be “formulaic” and “composed in haste”. Perhaps the most “egregious” example is the comedian and actor David Walliams “under whose name appear plotless monstrosities written with all the charm, wit and thoughtfulness of a battering ram”.
A force for good?
Still, “quality celebrity children’s books do exist”, said Creamer in The Guardian. Works like Marcus Rashford’s “Breakfast Club Adventures” series “help increase representation in children’s fiction”.
What’s more, some people argue that titles written by celebrities can “help keep the industry healthy”. Author Howard Pearlstein told The Guardian that the attention generated by famous names helps to create a “rising tide that lifts the entire publishing industry”.
As things stand, though, the advances for children’s books are so small that only a “handful at the very top” are able to survive from writing alone, said Womack. “Could the vast pools of money currently sustaining celebrity children’s books be funnelled, instead, into decent advances for midlist and debut authors?” It isn’t just children’s literature that’s at stake: “it’s our entire cultural future.”