The prairie landscape of Laura Ingalls Wilder will soon be changing. HarperCollins, in an effort to keep the classic Little House on the Prairie series relevant to a new generation, is repackaging the paperback editions, and will replace the familiar covers by Garth Williams with photographic covers, and remove the inside art, starting in January.
Williams, who died in 1996, had a signature style—whimsical and folksy—that has endeared readers not only to the Ingalls books, but to E.B. White's classics as well, among others. Since 1953 Williams's work has graced the Ingalls series. But according to Tara Weikum, executive editor of HarperCollins Children's Books, sales of backlist properties in the competitive middle-grade market have been lagging. "For readers who view historical novels as old-fashioned," says Weikum, "this offers them an edition that dispels that notion and suggests that these books have all the great qualities of a novel set in a contemporary time."
Before deciding to make the change, Harper consulted its market. It held an informal poll of roughly 100 attendees at the 2004 National Council of Teachers of English conference, which persuaded them that librarians and teachers would welcome the idea of updated covers.
But some booksellers aren't so sure. Leslie Hawkins, owner of Spellbound Children's Bookstore in Asheville, N.C., says she will give the new covers a try, but she worries that parents, who like purchasing beloved titles from their youth, might be put off by the new look.
HarperCollins isn't scrapping the Garth Williams art entirely; his jackets and interior art will still be available in hardcover, as will the colorized paperback editions from 2004. That's good news to Alison Morris, children's book buyer for Wellesley Booksmith in Wellesley, Mass. Morris believes that "when you take a classic book and put a trendy cover on it, it's not a classic anymore." She feels that Harper should have kept the interior illustrations, and won't be buying any copies of the new editions. Instead she's stocking up on the colorized paperbacks.
Kate Jackson, editor-in-chief at HarperCollins Children's Books, understands Morris's point, but believes that Harper's responsibility is to keep the books "relevant and vibrant for kids today. A childhood book is an emotional, tactile object, and you want it to be as it was," she says. "But Laura Ingalls was a real little girl, not a made-up character. Using photographs highlights that these are not history but adventure books."
