tradition of lively narrative non-fiction could be used to interest young readers in
subjects previously thought too complex for them.
During these same years, the business of publishing children’s books also began to
diversify geographically. Early on, like all of American publishing, it had been centred
almost entirely on the east coast: first in Boston, then shifting to Philadelphia around
1820, and finally settling in New York in the late nineteenth century. Now, however, a
process of decentralisation from east to west began to take place with such ventures as
the launching of Parnassus Press by Herman Schein in California in 1957 for the
purpose of providing a showcase for western talent overlooked by the eastern
establishment.
In the early 1960s, growth moved ahead steadily, the annual output of new books
reaching 2,300 titles in 1963, and then once more a federal government programme
sent the industry into a dizzying upward spiral. In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act was passed, again making money available to schools for the purchase of
library books, and publishers were caught unprepared for the buying frenzy that
followed. Book inventories were sold out; new printings were delayed at overloaded
printers; and some publishers reported as much as a third of their backlist temporarily
out of stock. If a publisher did not have a children’s book department it tried to organise
one now and share in what seemed an unlimited market. Unfortunately by the time
companies were finally able to gear up for this new level of business, the money to
support the legislation had begun to dry up and in the decade of the 1970s the boom of
the Great Society turned into a bust.
One specific casualty of this downturn, accelerated by the isolationist reaction to the
trauma of the Vietnam War, was the market for books from other countries published in
translation, which had been on the rise since 1945. By 1973, internationally minded
editors were reporting a drop in sales for translated novels clearly rooted in a foreign
culture, even when they received outstanding reviews. Faring only slightly better were
the translated picture-books, which usually were not tied to a specific setting.
Apparently these editors concluded Americans were now more interested in erasing the
cultural differences found within the country than in learning about them.
Disillusioning and disruptive as the cycle was, however, in time it further broadened
and diversified children’s book publishing. Until now librarians had been the dominant
influence on editorial programmes in hard cover if not mass-market houses, because
they were the primary buyers; their approval could make or break a book. But as library
budgets tightened and book purchases dropped, the public began to turn elsewhere for
new titles, and the phenomenon of the special children’s bookstore appeared. By 1985,
these stores were numerous enough to form their own professional organisation known
as the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC), and in five years its membership
grew from forty to 800. Although many ABC members were former librarians and
teachers, their buying patterns differed to some extent, weighted more toward picture
books and younger readers, and in recent years a number of publishers have
emphasised this portion of their list accordingly. For some editors, the single most
important change of the last fifteen years has been the expansion of the partnership
between juvenile editor and children’s librarian to include the children’s bookseller.
THE CONTEXT OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 475