The New Yorker:

Celebrity picture books are having a moment. Are these the stories our children deserve?

By Sloane Crosley

There are no guilty pleasures in childhood. It is only as an adult that I feel a certain sheepishness when recalling one of my favorite picture books, “Ann Likes Red,” by Dorothy Z. Seymour, which was originally published in 1965. Wedged between the vaunted volumes of Gorey and Scarry, “Ann Likes Red” stuck out both literally, for its squat stature, and literarily, for its hazy lesson in self-assertion. Ann visits a department store with her mother, where saleswomen attempt to sell her on a variety of dresses and belts. Our heroine rejects every color but her favorite. When a shoe salesman, who has not been privy to the preceding pages, attempts to fit Ann’s foot with a tan sandal, he’s lucky he doesn’t get a kick in the jaw. In the end, Ann tries on her monochromatic outfit before a mirror, looking pleased as punch. It’s a tale of consumerism, superficiality, and petulance. I adored it.

Well, shame, cast thy gaze elsewhere. The arc-less antics of Dorothy Z. Seymour have nothing on this century’s celebrity-penned picture books, slim volumes that have infiltrated bedroom bookshelves like a pack of moralistic hobgoblins. I do not have children, nor am I a child, so it is not for me to say how many readers were lifted from their pigmented doldrums by Julianne Moore’s “Freckleface Strawberry.” But it is for me to say that having a child qualifies you to write a children’s book the same way that using a toilet qualifies you to be a plumber.

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