Reissued Children's Book Covers

VIEWPOINT 1: Children as a marketing target.
In an article that appeared in The Horn Book Magazine in 2000, Stephen Roxburgh addresses the changing format of the book as well as the changing reader. He writes, Today our culture, fixated on the potential of the so-called global economy, has identified children as an enormous market...My concern is with the twenty-first century's few-holds-barred application of mass marketing and merchandising techniques. Even as our society champions children and defends their rights, we are reaching into ther minds and pockets by whatever means possible, barraging them with powerful, exploitative, sophisticated media assaults, treating them as mature, fiscally responsible adults."Trilobites, Palm Pilots, and Vampires: Publishing Chidlren's Books in the Twenty-first Century."

Horn Book Magazine, Nov 2000 v76 i6 p653


VIEWPOINT 2: Helping children become aware consumers.
In the Congressional Testimony on Media Violence Henry Jenkins promotes teaching children and young adults "media literacy." He states,Our students need to learn how to process and evaluate those materials and reach their own judgements about what is valuable and what isn't in the array of media entering their lives.Although Jenkins focuses primarily on TV, movies, video games and the Internet, his ideas about helping children and young adults to be more critical of everything presented to them can be applied to the book market as well.

Henry Jenkins--Testimony presented before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Washington, D.C., May 4, 1999 http://www.svdltd.com/sells/cpa/speeches/jenkinstxt.htm