Read Like a Dragon!
by Judy Newman
When it comes to reading, kids know what they like. And what they don’t like. Some children’s books are published and disappear quickly, while some books are discovered and purchased and read and reread year after year. Certain topics are perennial: dinosaurs and Pokémon and pet-sitting and vampires are reliably popular. Some topics are born from pop culture touchstones: for example, after “The Naked Mole Rap” was featured on the animated Disney TV show Kim Possible, naked mole rats became a topic kids just couldn’t get enough of (or so I theorize). Even bestselling author Mo Willems got in on the fun!
I love to think about how trends ignite among kids. In one of my fantasy scenarios, somewhere in a kid control center a council of underage tastemakers meets to decide which topics kids are going to be interested in for the upcoming year. A message goes out on some universal notification system that only kids have access to, word spreads, and bestsellers are born.
Which makes the field of children’s books a very tricky—and thrilling—place to work. Topics come and go … and come back again. Some children’s books are proverbial flashes in the pan and some sell year after year after year. What makes a bestseller? Throughout the decades I have worked in children’s book publishing, I’ve tried to figure this out.
Many times, kids’ bestselling book series require just plain hard work and longevity. The Who Would Win? series by Jerry Pallotta and the There Was an Old Lady series by Lucille Colandro were each launched ten years ago in Scholastic Book Clubs and today, after years of author visits and creating new books in the series and teachers adopting these books for their classrooms, they are both global bestsellers, each with millions of copies in print.
Occasionally, the making of a bestseller is just serendipity. My favorite example of this dates back at least a decade ago, when my colleague, Dr. Ken Jolly, then head of our Scholastic Australia offices, could not believe that we were unable to sell the Australian mega hit The Wonky Donkey by Craig Smith, illustrated by Ms. Katz Cowley in our US Scholastic Book Clubs. For many years, we felt like inadequate marketers (why couldn’t we get kids in the US to love this book like their counterparts in Australia do?). Then, out of the blue in 2018, a Scottish grandma read the book aloud to her grandchild and the video went viral, and at last we had a US bestseller (followed by new books in the series) on our hands.
And sometimes, that council of kids meeting in their secret chambers decides that new topics are going to be popular, after publishers have spent years trying to get kids interested without success.
Take dragons, for example. When I first came to children’s book publishing, in the days when kids were still buying paper notebooks for back to school, we couldn’t give books about dragons away. Other than My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett, and a picture book rendition of Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton, we could not get kids interested in choosing dragon books from our Scholastic Book Clubs flyers. For years, our warehouse was filled with dragon books that didn’t sell. I am not sure what happened, but these days we can’t keep dragon books in stock: Dragon Masters, Dragon Girls, Wings of Fire, Dragons in a Bag, and an Adopt a Dragon kit atop our Scholastic Book Clubs bestseller lists.
As we head into a new school year, figuring out trends in children’s books—which new and classic books are going to inspire kids—is our number-one priority. At Scholastic, our goal is to help teachers give all of their students the power and agency and access to choose books they want to read. When kids make their own book selections, when they can see themselves in stories, and find exciting and interesting books about the world around them, they can declare with confidence, “I am a reader.”
My friend and literacy crusader author James Patterson says, “There’s no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books.”
That’s our mantra—to be there for kids with all kinds of interests and experiences. To try to get that secret intel for what kids are going to want to read about. And to have just the right books for the new dragon lovers among them.
Happy reading!
XX,
Judy
Judy Newman is President and Reader-in-Chief of Scholastic Book Clubs. For more information, visit judynewmanatscholastic.com.