Youth fiction is, as a market force, fascinating: it can be a graveyard for story ideas too absurd and infantile even for comic books, a medium for ideologues to unsubtly mold children’s minds, a method of inculcating the impressionable to except mindless pop culture, or, very rarely, the perfect setting for a transcendently popular work of literature, the most recent example being J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The children’s sections – and usually, the adjacent young adult annex – of any major bookselling chain reflect those maddening inconsistencies and glorious triumphs.
Wandering into Barnes & Noble, Jr. in the Westfield Shopping Mall in Palm Desert, this was immediately evident. The junior section, like B&N’s entertainment section, is given its own enclave on one side of the store. Unlike the entertainment section, the guardian of the gate is not an emotionally cold anti-theft detector, but Kenneth Grahame’s foppish amphibian Mr. Toad.
Toad’s kingdom is a colorful place. At the East end is a small stage for their reading program. To the West of that, the register. Everywhere in between is filled to the brim with volumes of bright, shiny, kid-friendly merchandise. The kind that can make an adults eyes bleed if they look at it too long for the proper eyewear. Even without taking the garishness into account, it’s better not to look too closely. You only end up unwittingly entranced by products like the BFF kit.
That’s “Bracelets For Friends” not “Best Friends Forever,” but the packaging doesn’t prohibit you from giving a BFF to your BFF. The only authoritative stance it does take (in a happy, cutesy, funny font way) is that it absolutely does not want children under the age of seven using it. After all, children under the age of seven are babies and stupidheads and need their mommies to walk them across the street.
Imagine if similar age advisories were in place for the rest of Barnes & Noble’s products. “For those over 18, even if most of the people who page through us are horny, 14-year-old single males” an advisory for photographic sex manuals could read. Or: “Don’t bother reading this thousand-page Churchill biography unless you were alive when he was in power.”
Some of what Barnes & Noble Jr. offers won’t forever destroy your vision like BFF – it’ll only make you scratch your head in befuddlement. “Is this what kids are reading now?” you’ll ask yourself. “When did I stop being hip?” About the time you had children, we’re guessing, unless you’re one of my friends with children. Then you and your brood are the cat’s meow, which I’m told is a compliment in the world of domesticated felines.
But pay that compliment to a dog and she’ll take umbrage. Even if the dog is otherwise occupied in a dizzying quantum conundrum like our friend Molly here.
Molly is traveling through time, but unlike other stories that rely on fantastical methods of transport like flying Deloreans, this canine is using the time-tested method of hypnosis. This is not without risks, as Molly soon finds out when she can’t figure out which version of herself she is. This is why you leave hypnotic time travel adventures to the humans, addle-brained mutt.
From the muddled to the majestic: Behold, a Swordbird!
It’s hard to ascertain exactly what’s going on in the scene depicted on the cover, but that golden avian has a huge fucking sword. This works in his favor, as his already formidable aerial attack is complimented by something no bird could have hewn. Ol’ Swordbird can lop the heads of entire armies without ever having to touch the ground!
Just outside the impenetrable fortress of childhood lies the young adult and “teen inspiration” sections. “Teen inspiration” is in quotations because no developmental psychologist worth their salt would find “3 Hour Diet for Teens” or “American Cheerleader” all that inspirational.
She’s blond! She’s airbrushed! She’s giving young girls complexes everywhere! If the cover model doesn’t deliver the death blow to living one’s teen years like an actual human being, their “oh-so-pretty makeup tips” will.
In the “These are the changes your body is going through” genre, there have been changes since the heady days of “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret”. Today’s pubescent primers don’t address the deity of Judeo-Christendom during a time of profound physical change. They dare to ask… “What’s going on down there?” Those of us who have been through the transformation know what’s going on down there:
Embarrassing classroom boners and hijinks…
…and crooked cocks that have the uncanny ability to give directions better than MapQuest can.
I could go on, but the crooked cock is pointing me away from such a path. In spite of the literary freak show you’ve just been shown, it’s absurd to presume that they’re representative of Barnes & Noble Jr. as a whole. There are many classics, new and old, that delight and educate. But like the adult market for books, they’re not impervious from the occasional incursion of phoned-in, dim-witted hackery which gets a special pass because it’s in a niche market. Also, Swordbird.
