The Places You Will Go: Children's Books - A Collection Worth Shouting About

Here's my Tots to Teens article about what I consider a good range of children's books.

Taking stock of a good store

I WAS recently assigned to write about a bookshop that claims to have the best range of children’s books in the Klang Valley. This got me thinking about what I would consider a good range of children’s books. Of course this would depend on whether the bookshop in question sells just new books, has an exclusively second-hand stock, or deals in both new and old titles.

Personally, I favour the third kind of store because when you pop in for that latest, hot novel, there’s also a chance you might find that out-of-print title you’ve been searching for for years.

However, purely in terms of a large, city bookstore, a good range of children’s books would have to include Enid Blyton’s mystery, adventure and school series, and those magical books she wrote about flying chairs, strange tree-top lands and eccentric gentlemen pixies.

Any bookstore worth its salt should also have classics (and modern classics) by the likes of Lewis Carroll, A.A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame, E. Nesbit, Noel Streatfeild, E.B. White, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Roald Dahl, Philippa Pearce and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Then there are books I consider essential reading, by authors whose names Malaysians might not be too familiar with. For example, Elizabeth Enright, E.L. Konigsburg, John Masefield, George MacDonald, Michelle Magorian, Adele Geras and Joan Aiken. (The same criteria applies to picture books – there must be a good mix of new and classic titles.)

I would be very impressed by any bookstore that carried titles by those mentioned above. Stores, big and small, are bound to have the latest Harry Potter as well as best-sellers by popular modern writers like Jacqueline Wilson, Meg Cabot, Cecily von Ziegesar and Jean Ure. But stocking books that aren’t guaranteed to fly off the shelves is what separates a good bookshop from just another company out to make a profit.

I believe that for a store to have a comprehensive collection of children’s books (this applies to other genres too) it’s crucial that the person in charge of merchandising is widely-read and interested in her/his product. Of course we can’t expect someone to have read every book that’s been published, and that’s where research comes into play.

Bookstore merchandisers need to expose themselves to different kinds of books and if they’re not actually reading them, they need to read about them. Reviews, author interviews and articles are available online and I believe they help tremendously in increasing one’s knowledge about what’s available, interesting, and worth investigating.

One of my favourite bookstores in the Klang Valley has a merchandiser named Kit, who’s been instrumental in turning its children section into one of the best I’ve ever come across (anywhere in the world). This young lady is extremely passionate about kids’ books, especially picture books. As a result she ensures that customers are exposed to a wide range of titles.

And thanks to her, picture book enthusiasts who visit the store will find not just titles by the usual suspects like Maurice Sendak, John Burningham, Michael Rosen, Shaun Tan, Eric Carle, Beatrix Potter, Dr Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown, but also a fine selection of lesser-known but nevertheless critically-acclaimed picture books, including those by Asian authors and illustrators like Chih-Yuan Chen, Vayu Naidu, Mitsumasa Anno, Genichiro Yagyu and Jae Soo Liu.

So, a good range of children’s books would definitely offer kids more than just bestsellers. It should also introduce new, interesting titles and expose them to a wide variety of styles, influences and content. I think this is especially important in a multi-racial, multi-cultural Asian country like Malaysia. Surely our children already know all there is to know about snowmen and Christmas. Now let’s tell them about yogis and the monsoon season.