Why is TikTok in This Book From 2006?
Say it ain’t so! I had no idea this was a thing. The print headline of this NYT piece is ‘Updating Old Books To Draw the Appeal of Younger Readers’ but as you can see, they went with ‘Why is TikTok in This Book From 2006?’ for the www.
The other week my daughter and I spontaneously recounted the first few Babysitters Club books in rapid-fire factoids. It was kind of wild to excitedly remember — in tandem — Dawn the cool new girl from California, the way the girls would have their meetings in Claudia’s room because of all her hidden snacks and also because she had a phone (landline) in her room (shoutout also to her “funky” outfits), how Kristy was a tomboy and Mary Ann was sort of babyish compared to the others, and of course the big drama of Stacey’s diabetes. (You may remember that this was revealed in BSC #3, the very ominously titled The Truth About Stacey.)
What made this so fun was that it was as if my daughter and I were peers or contemporaries. We had read the same books, but 25-ish years apart, and now were both having a little nostalgic fun remembering them together. (The copies she read weren’t updated!)
So color me surprised to read that it’s not unheard of for publishers to update — with an author’s permission — details that may feel anachronistic to a modern reader. For example, the publisher for YA thriller Pretty Little Liars apparently did a switcheroo and replaced watching Fear Factor with watching a TikTok.
I totally cop to being an annoying purist; I think kids can enjoy a book even if they don’t know what a VCR is. But there are plenty on the other side of the spectrum who agree with David Levithan, editorial director at Scholastic: “A whole new generation picked [The Princess Diaries] up because they didn’t see them as a nostalgia buy, like something that belonged to their parents. They saw them as something speaking directly to them.”
I know the point is to get kids excited to read. But what I wish publishers would admit — and Levithan does tiptoe around this a teensy bit — is that it’s just easier to ride the coattails of a title or series they already have than publish something untested but modern. Businesses be businessin’.
originally published on instagram