Actor Nathan Lane set the tone for Friday’s Children’s Book and Author Breakfast by thanking the audience — whom he oddly referred to as “1,500 librarians” — for their commitment to putting books into children’s hands and encouraging them to read. “And if that’s not an honorable profession, I don’t know what is,” Lane said, noting how essential and instinctual the telling of stories is to people’s lives. It was a theme that the three other breakfast speakers — Oliver Jeffers, Rainbow Rowell, and James Patterson — also emphasized during their own remarks.
“Picture books hold a special place in our culture,” Lane said, introducing Mabel, the canine hero of his debut picture book, Naughty Mabel (Simon & Schuster, Oct.), written with his partner, Devlin Elliot and illustrated by Dan Krall. Naughty Mabel is based upon Lane and Elliot’s real-life French bulldog, Mabel, who is “indeed spoiled and pampered,” assuming, for example, when she sees black Town Cars that they are there to transport her and her owners to their house in the Hamptons. That trait inspired Lane and Elliot to collaborate on a picture book about her, that also celebrates families “of all kinds.” Comparing picture books to the theater, Lane described picture books as one-act plays, calling the publishing process “incredibly collaborative,” which culminates in “magic,” just as in the theater.
Jeffers, who illustrated The Day the Crayons Quit, which was written by Drew Daywalt, recalled his childhood in Northern Ireland, growing up in an Irish Catholic family. “I’m from a large family and was surrounded by storytellers,” he said. ”Storytelling is in my blood.” Noting that he is a highly visual person, Jeffers told his own life story as an artist, using both words and illustrations on the large screens behind him. “I try to tell stories I think I’d like to hear,” he said, quoting Maurice Sendak and C.S. Lewis when explaining that he doesn’t target children when creating illustrations for such books as his next one, The Day the Crayons Came Home (Philomel, Aug.) he “aims” his storytelling at himself. Jeffers concluded his remarks by weaving a story with words and live line drawings of “my friend Henry,” the “incredible book-eating boy” who wanted to eat books to become the smartest person in the world, but came to realize that reading books was much easier than eating them and also would make him smart as well. With a laugh and a few strokes of his pen, Jeffers concluded his story by saying that Henry thus transformed himself into “the incredible broccoli-eating boy” who now reads books all the time.
Rowell also drew laughs from booksellers by disclosing that she had never thought as a child that she could become a writer: she wanted to be a librarian. Explaining that she came from a religious family, Rowell said that she’d thought that “all books came from God.” Noting that she became a journalist so that she could write “and have health insurance,” Rowell explained that her responsibilities as a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald included covering the happenings in rural northwest Iowa, east of Omaha. Rowell told stories about the “Pork Queen” at a county fair who was a vegetarian and about another county fair, when a giant popcorn ball was purposely blown up. “I drove from Omaha to see that,” she said.
Rowell, who began writing her debut novel (for adults), Attachments, as a way to vent her frustrations with her job as a newspaper columnist, explained that she wrote that and Eleanor & Park for herself: “No one is going to read it, so I’ll write exactly what I want,” she recalled thinking. Eleanor & Park being classified as a YA novel changed her life, Rowell explained, as she was thus introduced to a world of “passionate” readers who “don’t just love reading, they love books — holding [them], touching [them].”
Referring to Carry On (St. Martin’s Griffin, Sept.) Rowell promised to continue writing “as if no one was going to read it,” but expressed her wish that booksellers would continue to read her books.
Although the morning’s last speaker, James Patterson, is one of the best-selling authors in the world, he revealed that he hasn’t always been a book publishing powerhouse, noting that his debut novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, was rejected 31 times. When Along Came a Spider became a New York Times bestseller, he thought that its inclusion must have been a misprint. Patterson drew laughs as he recalled keeping watch over bookstore displays of his books. “We watch you, you pick up a book... you put it down, you break our heart. You buy it, you make our week,” he said.
Although Patterson began his presentation on a humorous note, he turned serious as he noted that he is on a mission “to save lives” by advocating for adult and children’s literacy. Patterson last year donated $1 million to independent bookstores and this year $1.5 million to libraries. He said that he wants to target “good readers” so that they will “read more broadly” and become “better citizens, better human beings,” and he he wants to target “at-risk kids” and make them “competent readers” so that they will be able to obtain an education and employment in a world in which literacy is a necessity. “We were put here at this breakfast to save lives,” Patterson said, urging the audience to literally and metaphorically “stand up” for books, for book publishing, and for literacy. “It’s not enough to just sit and listen,” he said, the book industry needs to “stand up and do stuff.”
“I hope we’ll all leave BEA with a personal mission to get kids reading,” he said, announcing that the mission of his new children’s book imprint for Little, Brown, called jimmy, is that when a child finishes reading one book, he or she will be eager to start reading another.
While Lane concluded the breakfast by declaring that the morning’s presentations had made it worth his while “to get up early this morning after all,” booksellers were even more enthusiastic. ”It was so energizing. The speakers got the message out there in an entertaining fashion that bookselling saves lives,” said Nancy Brice-Simpson of the Book Vault in Oskaloosa, Iowa, “I laughed my ass off.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the amount of money James Patterson donated to independent booksellers and libraries. It is $1 million and $1.5 million, respectively, not $100 and $105 million.
