So, I was invited to a baby shower for two of my teammates who want me to help warp their first child. They recently committed matrimony, and are cranking a kid out right on schedule.
These particular parents-to-be were expressing their preferences for books, so I decided to supplement my usual homemade gift with something to help start Baby's library. I was hoping to find a used copy of that new Sylviane Donnio book, "I Really Want To Eat a Child", which is about a frustrated young crocodile. I ran the idea past the dad-to-be at the gym while trying unsuccessfully to twist off one of his arms. He thought it would be hilarious.
The crocodile book and "Go the Fuck to Sleep" are generally great choices for a new parent. Failing that, there's always plenty of Seuss and Little Golden Books, Maurice Sendak's book about the Wild Things, and Madeline. Right?
What could possibly go wrong with that? I thought. Thus I squeaked-- grimly, of course-- into a Hastings store.
Why Hastings, you might ask? Well... they're a chain of entertainment stores with movie, game, and book sections, but the book section is sizable and they're also known for selling nearly-new "used" books at a decent discount, and if you peel off the "used" stickers they're immaculate. What happens is that children outgrow their books or are given multiple copies, and the parents bring the unused extras to stores like Hastings to sell the surplus in exchange for credit toward what they really want. So if you're a cheapass individual like me, and you like to get credit for giving new items without having to pay full retail price, you need the kind of bookstore that re-sells them.
The children's book section was not what I remembered. The vast majority of it, in fact, was merchandising for corporate zombies in training. There was shelf after shelf of books about Barbie (Mattel gets a slice), Star Wars (Lucasfilms), and various Disney product placements. The Little Golden Books, which once upon a time were a legitimate Random House production, are now an advertising vehicle for the Disney corporation and others.
I searched in vain for classics. Where was "A Child's Garden of Verses" or "The House That Jack Built"? Nowhere. Everything written before 1980 seems to have disappeared, and been replaced by deliberate merchandising designed to program children into corporate consumers. I abso-fucking-lutely refuse to pay perfectly good money for a "book" that does nothing but advertise a product, movie, or TV show. Nor am I going to pay for the privilege of indoctrinating my teammates' children into the ways of corporate zombiedom.
I found "The Little Engine that Could", but the motherfuckers have abridged it to dumb it down and make it easier to read and market. Abridged? A children's book? What kind of demented twat even thinks that's necessary? I found some miniature 4x6" versions of some Doctor Seuss classics, but they wanted $9.99 apiece for them, down from $20.
The non-corporate books were outnumbered by the corporate offerings about 3 to 1. Of the non-corporate books, nearly all were glorified 32-page paper booklets with flimsy cardboard covers, held together by two staples, and selling at $5 or more. Very few were used, because they were designed to fall apart. Each had an identical layout, with an inane, forgettable character with an alliterative name a few monosyllabic words on each page, and no plot or development to think of. So not only were the materials disposable, but the content is too!
Among the non-corporate books were a few classics, but they were jammed randomly into the shelves with no apparent regard for title or author name. It's as though they were trying as hard as they could to make the books everyone wants hard to find, while pushing spin-offs, sequels, and other overpriced rip-offs.
In the end I fled the scene with no books and ordered everything online from Amazon, where I was able to get what I wanted with free shipping. I suppose I was lucky I wasn't thrown out. But has anyone else noticed what's been happening to children's books lately? It's terrifying.
Random House has sold the fuck OUT.