posted on 09 Jun 2017

The Children’s Book Signing: A Most Dangerous Enterprise

Have you ever seen those occasional bits of television reportage that tend to pop up on slow news days between Christmas and the New Year where seemingly demented shoppers trample, tear and scratch at each other to get their hands on super sale bargains in some shop or other selling gimcrack gewgaws no-one wanted at full price? Scary stuff – enough to keep me away from the shops during sale events that’s for certain.

Sound familiar? Well recently I’ve discovered an environment even more terrifying than the post-Christmas sale rush – a book signing event targeted at pre-teen, middle-class children. Most often it’s girls but just now and again boys get involved too.

There you are at your oh-so-civilised literary festival, browsing around the book tent, scanning the book tables which are loaded and groaning with sumptuous hardbacks, when out the corner of your eye you spot the beginnings of a book signing queue starting to form.

Your first mistake is to let curiosity get the better of you and you meander across to see who the attraction might be and drift on down to the table where the author’s books have been piled. Almost imperceptibly small children begin to slip past you at pace and a high pitched, high velocity background babble begins to swell as the queue grows exponentially.

But at this point you’re still relaxed, you’re confident, you can still easily move away in good time and leave the floor to the hyperactive collective that is pooling all around you – there is, you foolishly think,  time just to check out another couple of books before you go. That’s the second mistake. Suddenly you’re trapped; no, not just trapped but pinned against the table by the snaking line of girls in a state of over-excitement, shouting over each other, tooth braces flashing, comparing books, looking in a panicky fashion for a parent who is going to embarrass them. You can’t move without actually physically pushing one or two of them out of the way: you’re tempted but you think better of it.

That’s mistake number three because now here comes the second wave of this invading army – the parents. Sharp-elbowed, expensively casual, undilutedly middle-class mommies with cut-crystal voices and daddies with manicured designer stubble intent on getting their young Tasmin or Guy the book they want so it can be signed – or worse still, bagging an advanced place in the queue while their off-spring spins around the book tent making themselves giddy ( and possibly sick – I couldn’t bear to look).

But now you’re well and truly done for. You’re going to have to ride it out and wait for the queue to shuffle on far enough for you to slip out. Why, you think, doesn’t the damn author get on with it and get some of these bundles of over-activity shifted. And that’s when a terrible truth dawns on you – the author actually likes children. S/he not only wants to sign their books, they also want to actually talk with them, each and every one. And, outrage upon outrage, they want their photograph taken with their hero as well – everyone’s a celebrity photographer in these days of the mobile phone.

You stand transfixed, unable to move for fear of treading a small person into the carpet and watch with a mixture of awe and astonishment as the winding line moves at a glacial pace. The genuine prospect that you might be there for the foreseeable future begins to grip you and a slow trickle of sweat wends its way down your back.

 

When finally you extricate yourself from the corner you’ve inadvertently sealed yourself into, there's space to breathe, to observe what's happening from a distance and things start to look very different. The sun comes out. All these youngsters so eager to get a book signed that they’d stampede over you without a moment’s thought  suddenly look like hope for the future. And isn't wonderful that these authors are so generous with their time - hopefully their enthusiastic readers will treasure this moment with them and that this will make them readers for life. If they can love books this much maybe, after all, we’ve got something to look forward to as the new generation grows?

I head for the book tent exit feeling oddly expansive and benign just as a new dribble of over-excited little people start rushing past me, brushing me aside. Time for this old man to make way……

 

Terry Potter

June 2017