{"id":30375,"date":"2019-07-30T07:30:23","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T11:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30375"},"modified":"2019-07-30T07:30:23","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T11:30:23","slug":"board-books-gripe-revised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30375","title":{"rendered":"Board Books Gripe, Revised"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>

War and Peace, the board book? Image \u00a9 Romchello | Dreamstime.com<\/p><\/div>
\nA while back, I bemoaned the growing trend<\/a> for publishers to turn pretty much every successful picture book into a board book, no matter the age of the intended audience.\u00a0Stories\u00a0aimed at\u00a03-to-5- or 4-to-6-year-olds, I felt, did not make good board book candidates, since that market is primarily for the 0-2 crowd. Unsuspecting parents would buy these beautiful-looking board books, assuming they were great baby\/toddler reads, and be very surprised to find their tots bored three pages in by all the text and the incomprehensible story lines.
\nRecently, though, I’ve had a semi change of heart.
\n
\nI still think lengthy picture books are absurd misfires as board books; witness that plethora of text, shrunken\u00a0to 8-point type!\u00a0Or worse, the graceless abridgments.\u00a0But board books are a sturdy format, and they last practically forever. That’s not a terrible thing for small hands in the 3-to-5 age range.\u00a0A board book might be a great alternative to a paperback for some picture books aimed at four- and five-year-olds.
\nIt would take a cultural shift, though. As it is, many parents are rushing their kids out of what they think of as “baby books”\u00a0and into chapter books as early as possible, often before kids have truly outgrown the beautiful and often sophisticated wonders that picture books have to offer. (Do we ever really outgrow those?) Reframing board books as appropriate vehicles for post-toddler pre-readers might be a challenge. One possible move: giving the books a larger format and slightly thinner board book pages (to accommodate the increased length)\u00a0could help differentiate them from “baby” board books, and would enable them to be shelved\u00a0with the regular picture books rather than in the board book\u00a0section.
\nIf that doesn’t work, publishers could take a page from Workman’s appealing and amazingly successful\u00a0Indestructibles<\/em> series and try longer picture books in the “chew proof, rip proof, nontoxic, 100% washable” format. I don’t know how expensive a 32-page picture book would be as an Indestructible, but if the\u00a0list price could be between $9.95\u00a0and $12.95, I’ll bet there are millions of parents who would be willing to try them\u00a0out and grateful for their\u00a0light yet surprising ruggedness.
\n

\"Image

One of the Indestructibles titles for babies. Imagine Bread and Jam for Frances as an Indestructible! Or Whistle for Willie. Or Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. Or Corduroy. Or Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Or Where the Wild Things Are.<\/p><\/div>
\nWhatever the solution,\u00a0it could be great to\u00a0have a sturdier\u00a0format than paperback for the enduring childhood favorites that\u00a0children reach for\u00a0over and over and over again. And if that means reframing the concept of who board books are for,\u00a0or broadening the scope of Indestructibles, I for one am up for the challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if we revamped the public’s image of board books?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}