Thereby hangs a tale...
Eric Baker
Once upon a time, back in the 'fifties, a young man there was with three young children and they enjoyed being read to. After exhausting all the well-remembered favourite books that he was fond of, he went in search of new books to share with them, only to find that there were no bookshops in his neighbourhood to which he could take his children and those near to his place of work could only offer an undistinguished motley of "bestsellers"; worse still no one was able to give him the advice he needed.
In the course of his travels up and down the country he found .that this state of affairs, with very few exceptions, prevailed wherever he went. It bothered him and so he started dreaming dreams of how he could set about satisfying an obvious need. "A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it" as Francis Bacon wisely observed, and exactly ten years ago the opportunity came his way and was seized upon to take over a large Kensington bookshop which he renamed 'Children's Book Centre' to specialise entirely in the sale of children's books.
With some knowledge of publishing and no experience of bookselling, his colleagues and friends, with the kindest of intentions, did not hesitate to point out to him the folly of his ways and the financial ruin that awaited him. During those first five years there were many occasions when doubts assailed him, and he wondered if he had been wrong in spurning the advice so gratuitously offered. By then it was too late to turn back and John Bunyan's description fitted: "A man there was, tho' some did count him mad, The more he cast away, the more he had" The first seven years were a harsh period of apprenticeship, learning the techniques of how not to run a bookshop and realising the vast areas of children's literature to be explored. Experiments were tried, many failed but the objective always remained clear ahead.
The bookshop which the public sees in Kensington today has several unique features. It is the largest to be found anywhere specialising entirely in children's books. This it has to be, because there are at this time some 17,000 children's books in print, and of these about 7,000 of them are there to be seen for the asking.
Every new children's book is taken into stock as soon as it is published, and each week a list is circulated to the staff and to their institutional buyers and the books put on display for a week to be seen and read. At the end of every week a meeting of the sales and buying staff together with the editors of their quarterly newsletter is held. The previous week's new books are gone through in detail, their merits and demerits are discussed and decisions made as to the rating they should be given. Outstanding books are awarded a blue star, books which are useful or for which there is an apparent need are given red stars. All starred books are kept in stock while the rest are sold out and not replaced. The effect of this open discussion over a period of weeks, months, and years produces a well-informed staff with a tremendous feeling of involvement in marked contrast to the apathy of those faceless creatures one sees sitting at tills, ringing up money, and stuffing purchases in a bag in the name of service. But the Kensington bookshop represents but a part of the growing activity going on. Because people were not coming to buy books in sufficient numbers the lesson had to be learned how to take books out to places where people wanted to buy them, and this is now done on a large scale. One instance of this was at a 'Festival of Puppets' held at Sion Park a few summers ago. An invitation to provide a Book Tent was accepted and many well-known children's authors were encouraged to come and meet the children. During the five days of the exhibition over 2,500 families with children bought books, who had no intention of doing so when they set out for the day. Many were introduced to the book-buying habit for the first time and that was something to stir the emotions.
Another less visible activity is the editing and production of Children's Book Newsletter, a quarterly publication. This does not attempt to review books. This is best left to the professionals, but is simply recommends those newly published books which have impressed everyone concerned as particularly useful or interesting. Each annotation is most carefully put together to inform the reader who may never have the opportunity of seeing the book. This quarterly newsletter is sent to regular customers who are to be found in forty-six different countries all over the world. Anyone who wishes may have it on payment of £1.00.
With the formative years behind us what does the future hold? Igflation is forcing the prices of children's boas up at an alarming rate, but still the flood of new books does not seem to lessen. Every publisher agrees that far too many books are being published and when Children's Book Centre's annual nomination list of best books contains no more than two hundred titles out of more than 2,000 published there is surely some misdirected energy.
Custom, education and fashion make us adults what we are, but before these influences have taken their toll, children of all generations change little in their likes and dislikes. How otherwise can one explain the evergreen popularity of such authors as Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, C. S. Lewis, Walter De La Mare, Arthur Ransome and many many more that have stayed with us over the years? Publishers who neglect their back lists do so at their peril.
While excellence in books remains and parents and children are there to share the delights they offer we enter the foothills of our second decade with more certain step and confidence in that timeless promise — "and they lived happily ever after."
Eric Baker is founder and managing director of Children's Book Centre Ltd
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