By BARBARA BRYANT
There is a surplus of illustrated children's books for sale these days, but a real shortage of good ones.
So said Sybille A. Jagusch, chief of the Children's Literature Center at the Library, echoed by several speakers during a daylong symposium on children's picture books held in the Mumford Room on Nov. 8.
In the Mumford Foyer, guests caught a glimpse of an accompanying exhibition, "For the Heart of a Child: The Enduring Picture Book," featuring outstanding titles published during the past 30 years. Forty-five titles produced by authors and illustrators such as Maurice Sendak, William Steig, Margot Zemach, John Steptoe and others will be on display through Feb. 8.
"Over the past few years, we've seen a huge increase in the publication of children's books, but not necessarily of memorable stories or pictures in them," Ms. Jagusch explained. "Many of the books are very shiny and have lots of movable parts so that children can play with them - even in the bathtub. But, for all their flexibility, most of these books don't live long in a child's imagaination. They don't linger."
Ms. Jagusch tempered her initial observation, however, by wondering aloud if she, along with many other observers with similar views, were perhaps guilty of being nostalgic rather than objective in critiquing today's crop of new titles. "Are we idealizing the books of our past?" she asked the audience, which included publishers, children's book authors, reviewers, teachers, editors and librarians from several states and overseas.
Betsy Hearne, a writer and former editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, delivered the results of a survey she conducted to identify "perennial favorites" - titles that have captivated children and adults through the generations, since 1901. Ms. Hearne, who teaches children's literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was quick to admit the unavoidably subjective nature of a such a list, one that she nevertheless hoped would present a "Charlotte's Web of picture books, ones that combine high quality with popular appeal."
Her roster of 35 titles, winnowed down from 50, does not include traditional folk or fairy tales, which Ms. Hearne believes warrant analysis in an anthropological context. She also omitted books that, although highly popular with young readers, have been dismissed by adult reviewers in the field. Although she sought opinions from a broad range of adults and youngsters, Ms. Hearne confined her list to books that children could understand by reading - or being read to - without interpretations by adults.
Ms. Hearne explained many of the features that these "perennials" have in common. All are stories that children listen to attentively and that adults can enjoy reading many times, "without going crazy," she said with a grin. In all cases, the artwork included large expanses of white space to add clarity and provide children with room to project their imaginations. She pointed out that the oft-maligned cartoon-style predominates in the literature and praised its functionality and simplicity, which matches the elemental tone of many stories while reflecting their content.
According to Ms. Hearne, a successful narrative makes the old new again by reviving characters and situations found in popular folklore. Most such narratives feature repetitive symbols, rhyming and archetypal characters such as the fool who blunders into and out of self-inflicted situations or the lone hero who incurs trouble by violating a prohibition but becomes wiser for his ordeal.
She noted that children enjoy seeing the protagonist "violate a prohibition" and the chaos that often results. She did not, however, suggest that this reaction justifies the current trend toward incorporating disturbing current adult issues. "The most enduring books have an almost embarassing simplicity," she noted. "When we fail to recognize the sophistication in such simplicity, we're actually adult-erating the literature."
Throughout the symposium, Ms. Hearne and other speakers pointed out how children's stories, like life, tend to repeat themselves by winding up where they began. "Are we programmed to repeat ourselves?" she asked. "I hope older adults will read the books they read as children, returning to them and thus, coming full circle."
Ethel Heins, editor emerita of The Horn Book Magazine, championed the simple approach to storytelling. Ms. Heins said children cannot be expected to read adult versions of the Bible or even of traditional folk tales. "But they're fodder for today's picture books." Ms. Heins agreed with Ms. Hearne's dismissal of current authors' attempts to fill children's books with complex, trendy or, worse, didactic subject matter, insisting that such content will not inform but only confuse the intended audience. She quoted critic Louise Konigsburg, who said, "No child has ever been interested in a story for its own good."
What such didactic stories often lack, Ms. Heins observed, was a sense of comedy, an ingredient that even Beatrix Potter, who was raised in a strict Victorian household, recognized as essential for her stories about the hapless Peter Rabbit. "Many current picture books are humorously impoverished," she concluded. "The child must first be charmed by the sound of the words, or the book will not last."
The symposium's Japanese participant, Hidekazu Sato of Tokyo, described his work as president of Koguma Publishing Co., which specializes in picture books for a Japanese audience. Although originally headed for a career in economics and finance, Mr. Sato developed a taste for Western children's books while teaching Sunday school. He explained through an interpreter that post-World War II Japan was book-starved. Shortly after graduating from college, he started his publishing company and, after reading picture books written by U.S. authors to his children, decided to devote his efforts to producing such books for youngsters in his country.
Mr. Sato chose his illustrators carefully, focusing on a preschool audience. He instructed his illustrators to produce graphics that displayed a uniquely Japanese style and format. To date, after 30 years, Mr. Sato has sold 4 million copies of books in one 15-volume series alone.
His characters are uniquely Japanese in many respects. One book features a group of cats, none of whom have names. All act as a group, thus embodying some basic aspects of Japanese culture. "The book has been very successful in Japan and Korea, but not in the United States," he said.
Laurie Sale, vice president of Home and Family Entertainment at Philips Medi Software in Los Angeles, unveiled several CD-ROMs that offer interactive access to the contents of several educational children's books. She cited the success of such products as "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego" and "Math Blasters," but added that the CD-ROM cannot replace a child's experience with a book: "If you had a chance to show your child the Mona Lisa on screen or in a museum, you'd go to a museum"
The high cost of producing such CD-ROM products - $300,000 to $800,000 per disk - forces the producer to sell many disks to break even, said Ms. Sales, leading leading many companies to cut corners by using limited animation, stock characters, unimaginative storylines and canned music.
The day ended with a reading by Rosemary Wells's Morris's Disappearing Bag: A Christmas Story, whose work is featured in the Library exhibition. Ms. Wells, who has published or contributed to more than 70 picture books (and has "23 waiting to be written"), repeated earlier speakers' dismay over the current lack of high-quality books in the genre. "Hundreds of new adult books are published every season and that's wonderful. We need them. But if a child were introduced to a library or bookstore whose stock of children's books hadn't been changed in 25 years, he'd never miss anything.
"There are too many titles on the shelf today," she added. "You have to have a rare voice to write a children's book. It's like being a countertenor. Not many people have it."
Ms. Wells, echoing other sym-posium participants, said that a children's book, to be good, must "stand up to 50 readings. Like you, children have to want to go back to the same book again and again."
Barbara Bryant is a Washington free-lance writer.