The Teen Challenge
Are parenting books about the teen years flooding the market? Not exactly. There is more shelf space devoted to volumes on early childhood and the elementary years. But, notes Elizabeth Hair, senior research associate at Child Trends Inc., a nonprofit research organization in Washington , D.C. , books on teens used to be nonexistent. “That they even exist now is testimony to parents’ wanting to be involved, but in age-appropriate ways.” Historically, parents have thought they could pull back a bit as their children got older, Hair says, but this is proving not to be the case. “Youth who feel they’re communicating with their parents are kids who are doing well. They are the ones who are able to make a smooth transition to adulthood. It sounds simple but each issue is complicated. Sex at 14? How do I deal with that? Talking with them is a first step.”
Karen Pittman, executive director of the Washington-based Forum for Youth Investment, a not-for-profit bridge between research policy and practice on issues that affect youth and their development, agrees with this assessment: “Teens want to talk to their parents. They admire and respect them.” What do they want to talk about? Not just the traditional worries of dropping out, drugs, pregnancy and violence, but what Pittman calls new, 21st-century risks: obesity, HIV, caffeine use, cell phone use, financial illiteracy. “These aren’t new things, but new twists on teen behavior,” Pittman says.
The latest batch of teen books tackles some of these issues. Jenifer Marshall Lippincott, author, with Robin M. Deutsch, of 7 Things Your Teenager Won’t Tell You: And How to Talk to Them Anyway (Ballantine, Mar.), stresses that keeping the conversation going is the most important thing. “We just need the right passwords for entry—and the right techniques to keep the communication lines open and constructive,” she says. Three rules for teens—stay safe, show respect and keep in touch—help organize the book’s advice.
Breaking the Code: Two Teens Reveal the Secrets to Better Parent-Child Communication (NAL, Mar.) discusses the talk issue from a teen’s point of view. Authors Lara Fox and Hilary Frankel, now 17, were 16 when they wrote their book, which grew out of discussions with their peers. “The cool thing about Breaking the Code is that it is not filtered through an adult perspective,” says executive editor Tracy Bernstein. “It’s really helpful to see the teen perspective, whether or not it makes you want to scream. It’s not an accurate or fair point of view necessarily, but we all need to hear it.
“It was a truism that it was mostly parents of young children who wanted to read childcare books,” Bernstein says. “As years went on, we heard that the middle-school years are hard, and parents wanted to hear about that. Now parents want inside advice about the teen years. The market has grown up with the child. A lot of books at first blush were dire, like Augusta , Gone , and looked at extreme situations. Now books are beginning to get to more common experiences, not pathology or extreme but everyday difficulties.”
“Everyday difficulties” are being redefined all the time, as in Koren Zailckas’s Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood (Viking), a first-person account of binge drinking among teens. “I read it in one sitting, on Labor Day weekend,” Zailckas’s mother told reporter David Mehegan of the Boston Globe, “and I just grieved. It’s a cautionary tale, not only for girls but also for parents. We never would have thought she had an alcohol problem; we were observant and involved.”
Depression is another “new” issue. “Prior to the 1970’s, doctors and researchers did not think children and adolescents experienced depression,” notes Dr. Lisa Machoian in The Disappearing Girl: Learning the Language of Teenage Depression (Dutton, Mar.). Now, of course, a whole industry, pharmacological and therapeutic, has grown up around this problem. Machoian, a disciple of girl-expert Carol Gilligan, offers advice on how to tell the difference between normal teen angst and more serious disorders.
“Everyone looks forward to the teen years as a time your parenting skills are really tested,” says Plume editor-in-chief Trena Keating “Society sends a mixed message via people like Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera—hot young women dressing for sex and suggesting their value is to be a sex object for men. These messages are causing identity crises and an epidemic of depression. It’s something parents can really help with by decoding the messages and telling their daughters it’s basically marketing.” The Truth About Teens and Sex by Sabrina Weill, a former editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine (Perigee hardcover, Sept.), offers another helpful perspective.
Rescuing Your Teenager from Depression by Norman Berlinger (HarperResource, Apr.) is by a doctor-parent who missed all the signs of depression in his son but eventually helped him pull out of it and writes here of a 10-step “parental partnering program.” Editor Toni Sciarra bought the book because the author’s credentials: a father who was a professional, and “a unique combination, a family survivor story with a medical tale.”
Another book about teens gone wrong, What It Takes to Pull Me Through: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four of Them Got Out by David L. Marcus (Houghton Mifflin) draws on the experience of girls and boys at the Academy at Swift River, in Massachusetts, a program set up to help troubled teens regain their emotional health.
“Books on disorders do well,” says Kitty Moore, executive editor of the Guilford Press. “Parents go into a bookstore because they have a problem, not because they want to read about their kids.""I’m Like, SO Fat!”: Helping Your Teen Make Healthy Choices About Eating and Exercise in a Weight-Obsessed World by Dianne Neumark-Sztainer (Guilford Press, June) tackles a common problem, while the press’s Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder by James Lock and Daniel le Grange (Feb.) is for parents of kids with a defined eating disorder, an estimated 2% of the population.
Survival books by everyday folk are another voguish topic, as in Daughters Gone Wild, Dads Gone Crazy: Battle-Tested Tips from a Father and Daughter Who Survived the Teenage Years by Charles Stone and Heather Stone (W Publishing Group, Apr.), written for fathers and daughters by a father and daughter.
“The fact that we as parents are sure we’re far cooler than our own parents were doesn’t seem to have gotten through to today’s teens, “ says Yadin Kaufmann, publisher of Hundreds of Heads Books, whose latest, How to Survive Your Teenager by Hundreds of Still-Sane Parents Who Did, is being released in time for Mother’s (and Father’s) Day. “While many of the issues facing teenagers haven’t changed in recent years, of course, the environment in which they’re living, has—and teenagers today spend time on things that weren’t even invented when we were teenagers.” A newcomer to publishing books about teens, Kaufmann is sure that parents are clearly searching for—and are open to—guidance and advice. “Anything we can do to help parents better understand what other recent ‘survivors’ have gone through raising their own teens is comforting and useful.”
Exactly so, says Gail Hudson, coeditor, with Faith Conlon, of I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers (Seal Press, Apr.), which presents essays by parents, many of them well-known writers, who have been through the teen years with their children. According to Hudson, a freelance writer and book reviewer, they were flooded with submissions when a call for stories went out. “The hot spots for parents are tattoos, piercings, songs and drugs,” she says. “People wrote about how do you do the drug talk with kids if you took drugs in college—do you do full disclosure or not? It was reassuring and comforting to read about the real-life experiences of these parents. It’s compelling to hear about how another parent handled—or even better, mishandled it—certainly they made us feel steadier in our own parenting." —Suzanne Mantell
Genius on Board
Parenting books come in thematic waves that tend to reflect the mood of the culture at large, and the newest burst aims at nothing less than creating a generation of geniuses. The goal is not necessarily to have the smartest kid on the block—although that would be nice—but to make your child as intelligent as he or she can be.
Sheila Curry Oakes, an editor at St. Martin's (and the mother of a three-and-a-half-year old), traces the trend to an overly competitive society in which many parents are plagued by perpetual guilt. Even as they gaze lovingly at their newborn, they wonder: Have I done enough today to get my child into Harvard?
"It is just ridiculous, the pressure that exists out there," says Oakes, who has worked on numerous parenting books. The new crop of "genius" books taps into parental guilt and anxiety, "as most parenting books do," Oakes says. "Every parenting book tries to help a parent be a better parent, and help the child be better on some level. But this trend takes it to an nth degree."
The new "genius" titles make their intentions clear. David Plotz's The Genius Factory (Random House, June) shows how some parents began their quest for brilliant offspring by conceiving via the Nobel Prize sperm bank that was begun in 1980 by millionaire inventor Robert Graham. (Don't get any grand ideas for your own family: the place closed down in 1999.)
Nancy Miller, Ballantine's editor-in-chief, tells PW that the demand for these books comes out of a growing number of parents in recent years "who are obsessed with getting their infants into the Ivy League. She calls it "a really bizarre trend that doesn't say anything pretty" about American culture as it plays into what Miller terms "unbelievable anxiety" among parents.
"But that said," Miller continues, "We have a new title in this area: Baby Prodigy [by Barbara Candiano-Marcus]." She emphasizes the book's subtitle: A Guide to Raising a Smarter, Happier Baby, adding, "I think that is essential—your child has to be happy, too." Candiano-Marcus is the creator of the Baby Prodigy DVDs and CDs, which have sold more than 100,000 copies.
Another Ballantine entry in the smarter-kid sweepstakes is Claire Gordon's Nine Ways to a Smarter Kid, designed to help measure your child's intelligence with special test cards included with the book. (If you don't like the results, Nine Ways promises to help raise the score.) Coming next month from Delta is Brain Food for Kids, in which Nicola Graimes argues that certain foods can make your child smarter.
Smart kids beget smart moms, according to journalist Katherine Ellison, author of The Mommy Brain (Basic Books). Using studies involving motherly lab rats—as good a comparison to modern moms as any—Ellison says women who have had children are superior at multitasking, not to mention getting out of mazes.
But publicist Holly Bemiss says that Ellison is not advocating some idealized standard—the genius mom, as it were. The book, she says, "reinforces the idea that motherhood does not take away from your life, or your brain. It is not telling mothers that they have to be something that they are not. It's telling them that they are already smart."
Half the smart mothers and fathers in America would likely admit a secret longing to slip the phrase "my daughter, the Nobel Prize—winner" into the business gathering. But the other half—no fools, they—recognize that a) a giant brain does not always translate to a giant bankbook, and b) some children are better off trading on their looks. These parents might want to check out Raising a Star: The Parent's Guide to Helping Kids Break into Film, Television, Modeling or Music (St. Martin's, Apr.). Author Nancy Carlson (with Jacqueline Shannon) bills herself as one of America's top children's talent agents.
Oakes sums up this niche pragmatically: "Not every kid can be Einstein." As long as there are pushy parents, she adds, these books will find a ready market.—Elizabeth Mehren
Marking Milestones
As the kids grow up, so, too, do many of the tomes that have helped in their upbringing. One notable parenting publisher, two key titles and an evergreen series are all celebrating significant anniversaries this year.
You'd think a small press with 85 of its 89 titles still in print and a million-copy seller (The Way I Feel by Janan Cain) would be content to rest on its laurels when celebrating a 25th aniversary. Not Parenting Press, in Seattle. "Our goal has always been to publish classics, and we've used this anniversary to look back and see which books achieved that distinction, which did not, and why," says publisher Carolyn Threadgill.
And the key to a publishing a classic? "Know your niche's customers and what they want. Listen to those customers and apply what you learn to future titles. Field test, field test, field test—before publication. And have a passionate interest in the subject you publish and the people you intend to help. You'll still make mistakes now and then, but most of your books will be classics—always in demand." Clearly, then, hopes are high for Helen Neville's Your Developing, Changing Child, Birth to 6 Years, coming in October.
In 1985, it seemed unlikely that Kathleen Huggins's The Nursing Mother's Companion would ever have a 20th anniversary edition (due next month), much less sell a million copies. "We published it simply because we believed it would be the very best book available," says Harvard Common Press publisher Bruce Shaw. "We knew many of the doctors dispensing advice about breastfeeding were men, and what in the name of heaven did a man know about a breast?" Initial sales were modest, but then "that old-fashioned intangible, word of mouth, took over when ILCA, an organization of breastfeeding professionals, began to spread the word. This book's continued success reminds us that the old fundamentals of successful publishing still work: a strong book packaged correctly for its core market, publicized and marketed aggressively to its audience, will, through word of mouth, promote the book to a much larger success."
The mother-to-be of all parenting books, What to Expect When You're Expecting, turns 20 this year. "The authors gave us a great manuscript, filled with all the information pregnant women were craving and written in just the right reader-friendly voice," recalls Workman executive editor Suzanne Rafer. "We gave it just the right cover and title, and marketed it with energy and a lot of belief in what we had to offer." The What to Expect series (the latest, What to Expect: Eating Well When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff, is due in April) has more than 25 million copies in print. "Pregnancy is never out of date. And neither is What to Expect —and we expect it never will be."
It's a 30th anniversary and sales approaching 11 million for Glenn Doman's Gentle Revolution series from Square One Publishers in Garden City Park, N.Y. Revised and updated editions of all five titles, including How to Teach Your Baby to Read, are due this summer. "I believe in treating all my books as though they're frontlist titles," says publisher Rudy Shur. "Too many publishers treat titles as if they're a line of clothing to be discarded at the end of a selling season. Good books have an intrinsic value that can last for years, decades, even centuries. For the person seeing a book for the first time, that book is new. Sell books with that in mind, and you'll sell more books."—Lucinda Dyer
Opening the Door on Autism
The market for general trade autism titles has been gaining traction over the past year. Mark Haddon's novel about an autistic savant, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage), has been a staple of the New York Times bestseller list for 35 weeks, while paperback rights to Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson's hardcover nonfiction bestseller, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (Scribner), were auctioned to Harcourt earlier this month for the mid-six figures. "I had thought of it as an animal book," says senior editor Tina Pohlman. "But when I saw Temple Grandin at the 92nd Street Y, I realized it is an inspiration for people with autism and their families."
That there is a hungry market for autism titles should come as no surprise, given the statistics for this neurological disorder, for which there is no known cause or cure. According to Lynn Kern Koegel, cofounder of the Autism Research Center at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and coauthor, with Claire LaZebnik, of Overcoming Autism: Finding the Answers, Strategies, and Hope (Penguin), which was reissued in paperback in January, autism has reached epidemic proportions. In California alone, approximately one in 150 children is diagnosed with it.
This season, two types of autism-related parenting books are starting to emerge—memoirs about overcoming the disorder and special-needs guides. For Catharine Sutker, acquisitions director of New Harbinger Publications, "although there will always be a place for the omnibus parenting advice book, they are grossly inadequate when facing a complex problem requiring multiple coping strategies like autism spectrum disorders. Autism is a neurological disorder. You have a whole set of complex problems that you can't solve based on your intuition or your love." What drew her to Stephanie B. Locksin, Jennifer M. Gillis and Raymond G. Romanczyk's Helping Your Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Families (June) is that it looks at how the disorder affects the entire family.
"Because there is no clear-cut model for how to treat autism, people are looking for answers. It's not a one-book category," notes Perigee Books senior editor Marian Lizzi. And, in fact, Perigee, which has a strong special-needs parenting list, recently published two titles for this market: Alan Sohn and Cathy Grayson's Parenting Your Asperger Child (Feb.) and a paperback reprint of Cheri Florance and Marin Gazzaniga's Maverick Mind: A Mother's Story of Solving the Mystery of Her Unreachable, Unteachable, Silent Son (Jan.).
Allison McCabe, a senior editor at Berkley Books, wasn't specifically looking for a book on autism when she met author Christina Adams (A Real Boy: A True Story of Autism, Early Intervention, and Recovery ; May), at a writer's conference. "I was struck by how passionate she is. I thought other people would find comfort in her book," says McCabe, adding, "the most frightening part to me is that usually the parent is the last to notice. Christina thought it was absolutely fabulous that her son could sit for an hour with a book when he was one year old. She's very candid."
Riverhead publisher Cindy Spiegel was also drawn to the passion and scientific research that Cure Autism Now founder Portia Iverson brought to Strange Son, which she bought in a high-six-figure auction."It's a big book for us and we will publish it [next January] as a big book beyond the autistic society." Riverhead will also publish a workbook by Soma Mukhopadhyay on how she taught Iverson's son and her own son, Tito, to communicate, and will reissue Tito's childhood account of what it is like to live with autism, The Mind Tree, at the same time. The fact that Revolution Films has already purchased movie rights to Iverson's memoir for Julia Roberts and her production company Red Om should dispel any doubts of just how wide the door has opened for these titles.—Judith Rosen
