Have kids' books lost the plot?
Hardcore readers amongst you may have found yourself nearly fainting in shock upon goggling at the colourful illustrations colonising every page of every children's novels in bookshops today. In this rather unfortunate situation, please bring extra cushions, because if author Anthony Horowitz — who brought us the adventures of teen spy Alex Rider — is in the vicinity, he, too, may partake in this fainting expedition.
Please not that I am not pointing fingers at Julia Donaldson's picture books replete with witty quatrains about gruffalos to lasso the fleeting sanity of parents of toddlers; I am referring specifically to middle grade books (or junior fiction aimed at ages 8-12) positively bursting with cartoon illustrations, the 'pick me' of books in an era when reading is a tedious chore assigned by the greater good (as opposed to an addiction rivalling the pull of nicotine). Yes, Wimpy Kid tomes with your stick figures and literally anything trotted out by David Walliams: this means you.
What Horowitz says
"I have misgivings about the world of children's books," Horowitz comments during a recent appearance on the Headliners podcast. "You know if you look in a bookshop, the books that seem to be popular — and I'm not decrying them for a minute because they are giving children pleasure — tend to have very bright colours on the cover and [a] sort of slightly cartoonish look."
Lamenting the steadily rising number of attention spans repulsed by (or terrified of) the prospect of anything over 300 pages, Horowitz's complaints about modern children's books are not over — and nor that they are without scientific merit.
"They're very short, they're big type, they're lots of pictures... that seems to be now what is more popular and it's not what I write," he continues as he goes on to blame social media for snipping away at attention spans.
For the cynical adolescent or Gen-Zer, it is almost impossible not to dismiss Horowitz's misgivings as the rantings of an old man yelling at clouds. To them, Horowitz is merely gazing longingly into what all of those in their (our?) advanced years love more than anything else in the whole world: the rose-tinted rear view mirror.
Even as we snooty lovers of (proper) fiction nod in agreement with poor Horowitz, far too many of us will blush at the memory of our parents' visceral horror in the '90s at our deep love for the almost bottomless well of Sweet Valley Twins, Nancy Drew, and the ageless Hardy Boys (the lifeblood of Karachi bookshops in the nineties). To add salt to the wound, we callously eschewed the works of JRR Tolkein, CS Lewis, and (worst of all) Mark Twain tentatively suggested by hopeful elders. Now, thanks to the circle of life, the time has come for us to issue those horrified elders a sincere mental apology and unabashedly join Horowitz as we, too, lament over the decidedly downward spiral children's fiction is on.
Is it really rose-tinted glasses?
Heavens, no. A casual riffle through the children's section will yield colourful Quentin Blake-style illustrations beefing up the text with relentless tenacity. Short, sharp sentences and random capitalisations (in a larger font size to truly ram home the point) festoon almost literally every page lest the sight of unremitting lines of text fail to lure you in. Children's novels have assumed the hard-copy appearance of a Tumblr (or Instagram or Facebook) rabbithole, catered specifically to an audience whose world will be laden scores of open tabs, powered by a powerful thumb capable of marathon scrolling.
Horowitz refrained from naming and shaming any author in particular, but we need not be as courteous. Let us examine the aforementioned Walliams — currently considered one of the UK's best-selling children's authors, albeit minus the global tidal force that was JK Rowling. I have here before me a sample from his collection of short stories, The World's Worst Children 2 (2021), although it is impossible to convey the full visual kaleidoscope in mere text without the array of font sizes, illustrations and random bold items Walliams has at his disposal:
"Creepy-crawlies are called creepy-crawlies for a reason. They are creepy and they are crawly. Slugs, worms, spiders, caterpillars and cockroaches are creatures that give most people the creeps. Not Griselda. Griselda was a girl who loved creepy-crawlies. If she saw a worm wiggling around in the mud, she would pick it up and put it in her pocket."
Contrast this with Kaye Umansky, a children's author in the '90s whom almost nobody has heard of. Here is a short sample from Pongwiffy and the Holiday of Doom (1995):
"Poor Scott. The world of show business is fickle and things hadn't been going at all well for him lately [...] The punters had stayed away in droves, and the film had broken all box office records with the lowest ever takings in history. Since then, he had been what is commonly referred to in show business circles as 'resting', which in all other circles means out of a job."
Sucking out the joy
It is unfair to condemn one and laud the other on the basis of scant lines, but rest assured that you can consider this application of wit and sentence structure as an accurate snapshot of their respective magnum opuses. Just like Walliam's fictional world encompasses a wild imagination (we cannot fault him for his stories the way we can for his liberal use of visual aids or short sentences), Umansky's repertoire is also filled with wild plotlines involving witches, vampires, goblins — but richly told via an almost Jane Austen-esque humour to keep parents hooked.
However, because Umansky's prose remains trapped within pages absolutely riddled with text and very few pictures, her books may as well be invisible to an enquiring child. I know this because at a local school, one librarian who wished to remain anonymous (for reasons that will soon become clear) said, "Take the whole Pongwiffy set if you really want, but don't tell anyone at school I'm just giving it all to you — we were getting rid of them anyway because they've just been sitting there for about 10 years."
Is it because fewer than ever parents are reading to their young children now? Has the task of learning to enjoy fiction been unceremoniously dumped upon an eight-year-old's unwilling shoulder without a guiding hand? Or do publishers simply need to work harder than ever (snappy sentences! Lots of colour!) to stand out as books become a dying breed?
One particular literary agent told screenwriter Cairo Smith (who promptly complained on X, as he well should) that teenagers can no longer understand a third person omniscient style. Are teenagers really this uncomprehending and unforgiving? Or is it because no publisher can risk losing to the seductive powers of social media? There are no easy answers — but how sad would it be if the adults of tomorrow have no literary childhood heroes to return to when they are in desperate need of a restorative hit of nostalgia.
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Express Tribune
10-06-2025
- Express Tribune
Have kids' books lost the plot?
Hardcore readers amongst you may have found yourself nearly fainting in shock upon goggling at the colourful illustrations colonising every page of every children's novels in bookshops today. In this rather unfortunate situation, please bring extra cushions, because if author Anthony Horowitz — who brought us the adventures of teen spy Alex Rider — is in the vicinity, he, too, may partake in this fainting expedition. Please not that I am not pointing fingers at Julia Donaldson's picture books replete with witty quatrains about gruffalos to lasso the fleeting sanity of parents of toddlers; I am referring specifically to middle grade books (or junior fiction aimed at ages 8-12) positively bursting with cartoon illustrations, the 'pick me' of books in an era when reading is a tedious chore assigned by the greater good (as opposed to an addiction rivalling the pull of nicotine). Yes, Wimpy Kid tomes with your stick figures and literally anything trotted out by David Walliams: this means you. What Horowitz says "I have misgivings about the world of children's books," Horowitz comments during a recent appearance on the Headliners podcast. "You know if you look in a bookshop, the books that seem to be popular — and I'm not decrying them for a minute because they are giving children pleasure — tend to have very bright colours on the cover and [a] sort of slightly cartoonish look." Lamenting the steadily rising number of attention spans repulsed by (or terrified of) the prospect of anything over 300 pages, Horowitz's complaints about modern children's books are not over — and nor that they are without scientific merit. "They're very short, they're big type, they're lots of pictures... that seems to be now what is more popular and it's not what I write," he continues as he goes on to blame social media for snipping away at attention spans. For the cynical adolescent or Gen-Zer, it is almost impossible not to dismiss Horowitz's misgivings as the rantings of an old man yelling at clouds. To them, Horowitz is merely gazing longingly into what all of those in their (our?) advanced years love more than anything else in the whole world: the rose-tinted rear view mirror. Even as we snooty lovers of (proper) fiction nod in agreement with poor Horowitz, far too many of us will blush at the memory of our parents' visceral horror in the '90s at our deep love for the almost bottomless well of Sweet Valley Twins, Nancy Drew, and the ageless Hardy Boys (the lifeblood of Karachi bookshops in the nineties). To add salt to the wound, we callously eschewed the works of JRR Tolkein, CS Lewis, and (worst of all) Mark Twain tentatively suggested by hopeful elders. Now, thanks to the circle of life, the time has come for us to issue those horrified elders a sincere mental apology and unabashedly join Horowitz as we, too, lament over the decidedly downward spiral children's fiction is on. Is it really rose-tinted glasses? Heavens, no. A casual riffle through the children's section will yield colourful Quentin Blake-style illustrations beefing up the text with relentless tenacity. Short, sharp sentences and random capitalisations (in a larger font size to truly ram home the point) festoon almost literally every page lest the sight of unremitting lines of text fail to lure you in. Children's novels have assumed the hard-copy appearance of a Tumblr (or Instagram or Facebook) rabbithole, catered specifically to an audience whose world will be laden scores of open tabs, powered by a powerful thumb capable of marathon scrolling. Horowitz refrained from naming and shaming any author in particular, but we need not be as courteous. Let us examine the aforementioned Walliams — currently considered one of the UK's best-selling children's authors, albeit minus the global tidal force that was JK Rowling. I have here before me a sample from his collection of short stories, The World's Worst Children 2 (2021), although it is impossible to convey the full visual kaleidoscope in mere text without the array of font sizes, illustrations and random bold items Walliams has at his disposal: "Creepy-crawlies are called creepy-crawlies for a reason. They are creepy and they are crawly. Slugs, worms, spiders, caterpillars and cockroaches are creatures that give most people the creeps. Not Griselda. Griselda was a girl who loved creepy-crawlies. If she saw a worm wiggling around in the mud, she would pick it up and put it in her pocket." Contrast this with Kaye Umansky, a children's author in the '90s whom almost nobody has heard of. Here is a short sample from Pongwiffy and the Holiday of Doom (1995): "Poor Scott. The world of show business is fickle and things hadn't been going at all well for him lately [...] The punters had stayed away in droves, and the film had broken all box office records with the lowest ever takings in history. Since then, he had been what is commonly referred to in show business circles as 'resting', which in all other circles means out of a job." Sucking out the joy It is unfair to condemn one and laud the other on the basis of scant lines, but rest assured that you can consider this application of wit and sentence structure as an accurate snapshot of their respective magnum opuses. Just like Walliam's fictional world encompasses a wild imagination (we cannot fault him for his stories the way we can for his liberal use of visual aids or short sentences), Umansky's repertoire is also filled with wild plotlines involving witches, vampires, goblins — but richly told via an almost Jane Austen-esque humour to keep parents hooked. However, because Umansky's prose remains trapped within pages absolutely riddled with text and very few pictures, her books may as well be invisible to an enquiring child. I know this because at a local school, one librarian who wished to remain anonymous (for reasons that will soon become clear) said, "Take the whole Pongwiffy set if you really want, but don't tell anyone at school I'm just giving it all to you — we were getting rid of them anyway because they've just been sitting there for about 10 years." Is it because fewer than ever parents are reading to their young children now? Has the task of learning to enjoy fiction been unceremoniously dumped upon an eight-year-old's unwilling shoulder without a guiding hand? Or do publishers simply need to work harder than ever (snappy sentences! Lots of colour!) to stand out as books become a dying breed? One particular literary agent told screenwriter Cairo Smith (who promptly complained on X, as he well should) that teenagers can no longer understand a third person omniscient style. Are teenagers really this uncomprehending and unforgiving? Or is it because no publisher can risk losing to the seductive powers of social media? There are no easy answers — but how sad would it be if the adults of tomorrow have no literary childhood heroes to return to when they are in desperate need of a restorative hit of nostalgia.
Express Tribune
11-03-2025
- Express Tribune
The great hand-me-down
There is something indescribably fun about hating nepo babies. And not just any nepo babies. An unusually potent vitriol greets them when they appear on our screens. Unlike industrial and political dynasties, a star-studded lineage in showbiz is a perennial, very visual reminder of the potholed road to success. An ambitious employee might find it just as frustrating to see the top seat at their firm reserved for the boss's son. But at least they can clock out at 5PM (or later, if the boss is a tyrant) and unwind with the comfort of undemanding, uninterrupted media consumption. Unless, of course, their pick for the evening is Shauna Gautam's directorial debut, Nadaaniyan - in which case, a corporate despot might actually be a welcome distraction. Derivative at every turn Saif Ali Khan's son, Ibrahim Ali Khan makes his acting debut with this painfully uninspired rom-com opposite Khushi Kapoor, daughter of late Bollywood legend Sridevi and producer Boney Kapoor, who made her acting debut with Zoya Akhtar's The Archies (2023). Nadaaniyan, too, arrives with full industry backing under the glowing banner of Karan Johar's Dharmatic Entertainment. The result is a story that will remind the audience of something else with every passing minute - including its two protagonists. Whatever Nadaaniyan attempts has been done before, and in far better ways, which is remarkable given the limited iterations of tired tropes like rich girl falls for poor guy and fake dating turns real. If Gautam thought a coupling of once-successful formulae would yield something new, she should have followed the nepo baby discourse more closely. After all, for every Ranbir Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt, there is an Abhishek Bachchan and Esha Deol. Ibrahim, too, has been done before - and better - by his father, Saif, the poster boy for 2000s rom-coms. As for Khushi, she brings to mind neither Sridevi nor Katrina Kaif (famously too charming to need acting lessons), nor even Ananya Panday - Khushi's contemporary and fellow nepo baby, who is attractively aware of her lineage and limitations. Instead, she exudes something terminally confused. Something that has the echoes of ambition and a complete inability to fight for it. Is the indescribable fun of hate-watching nepo babies as they infiltrate our screens just frustration in disguise? At least a billionaire entrepreneur's son failing spectacularly isn't served up for public consumption. In contrast, with an already dwindling pool of fresh storytelling in Bollywood and local cinemas, audiences are condemned to films like Nadaaniyan and remember once again how fundamentally askew the system is. Mediocre new actors can be overlooked, but mediocre nepo babies will always hog a negative spotlight, and in showbiz, to be ignored is far worse than to be slammed. A shallow potpourri For those who lean toward a millennial sensibility instead of the scroll-happy habits of Gen?Z and Gen?Alpha, Nadaaniyan may even shift your sympathies. Never before has a young generation been reduced to such a conservative mockery of politics and belief. Khushi plays the chirpy, super-rich Pia Jaisingh, the only child of bitterly estranged parents played by Suniel Shetty and Mahima Chaudhry, whose desire for a son is made no secret. Pia's only solace in her affection-starved life comes from her two best friends - two women willing to dismantle their trio over an unabashedly creepy guy. Determined to dispel suspicions about her alleged relationship with Mr Creepy, Pia decides to hire a boyfriend. Enter Arjun Mehta (Ibrahim), a man with both brains and looks but lacking the ultra-wealthy pedigree. His parents are a charming pair of white-collar workers (Dia Mirza as a teacher and Jugal Hansraj as a doctor). It's one of the film's many tragedies that Ibrahim inherits little charisma from either his on – or off-screen fathers. Even more remarkably, Nadaaniyan is led by two young lovers constantly overshadowed by the practiced emotional range of screen veterans like Shetty, Chaudhry, Mirza, and Hansraj. If you can set aside the abysmal acting (a tall order in any film), the clichéd premise might seem digestible, perhaps even nostalgic for the days of Wattpad and AO3. Yet a solid wash of acid reflux lies in wait to sour the film with excessive snark. The digitally native characters come off as unpleasant, unfunny, and self-absorbed - a perception better suited for social media rants. Either Delhi's Gen Z is uniquely unlikable and Gautam has picked the wrong genre to capture their inanity or the filmmaker is more interested in narrating her assumptions instead. Mercury enters retrograde It's no surprise that the once-angsty, rebellious millennials have become the new gatekeepers of generational disdain, mirroring the criticisms boomers and Gen X once lobbed at them. Today's youth exist under a cultural microscope, hyper-aware and hyper-visible. Khushi and Ibrahim, both 24, belong to a generation that is perpetually online, fluent in the language of red flags and icks, forever bracing for cancellation. Yet alongside the moral posturing is an ever-expanding infrastructure of digital surveillance, turning every misstep into permanent record. Even in a world where everything is everyone's business, Nadaaniyan struggles to justify its own. Generations aren't monoliths; they are shaped by class, consumption, and shared sensibilities. Anyone who understands the agony of a situationship or the promise of a talking stage knows what's at stake in modern love stories. These new anxieties about identity and dating demand an astute observer to read beyond the adrenaline-fuelled spectacle and semantics. Gautam simply does not possess that eye. In the end, you may laugh-cry at its nods to Mercury's oft-lamented retrograde and its clumsy love confessions ("Pyaar magic ki tarhan hota hai aur tu magic hai"). But even if Nadaaniyan doesn't inspire outright loathing, its hollow characters and limp conflict barely justify its existence, least of all when fronted by a generation that has inherited all the spotlight and none of the skill.
Express Tribune
28-01-2025
- Express Tribune
From TikTok to table
MADRID: At Madrid's new restaurant Pecados, the main attraction is not so much its fusion food as the young Ukrainian-born chef running it - a "Gen Z" social media star who shot to fame teaching recipes during the COVID pandemic. Elias Dosunmu, 27, boasts 9.6 million followers on TikTok, nearly five million on YouTube and two million on Instagram, making him - in his words - "Spain's most followed gastronomy profile". Dosunmu's rise exemplifies a new path to culinary stardom in the digital age. He speaks Russian with his Spanish-Nigerian father and Ukrainian mother, who also has Jewish and Polish ancestry, while he and his brother converse in Spanish. While juggling a job at a fast food franchise with a degree in aerospace engineering, he was furloughed when COVID hit. With research and the help of his partner, Dosunmu started making short recipe videos using techniques such as rapid-fire catchphrases, dynamic captions and loops, or seamless transitions from the end to the beginning. The restaurant's target audience skews young, mirroring Dosunmu's online following. Marcos Castellanos, 12, was in the restaurant eating with his parents, after having asked for a visit to Pecados (Sins) as a Christmas gift. "I know Elias Dosunmu from YouTube and TikTok. I watch him because I like to cook and sometimes I use his recipes," he said. Dosunmu's creations include Ukrainian varenyky - dumplings inspired by his grandmother's recipe. He puts his success down to a stubborn work ethic. "I remember my mom used to tell me that our people are used to surviving - literally." REUTERS
