Books as objects of beauty

I believe that books for young peo­ple should not only be great fun to read, but they should be beau­ti­ful objects. The book as some­thing fine to hold, and take in with eye, and hand, is an enhance­ment to the plea­sures of reading.

The fact is, how­ev­er, the qual­i­ty of book pro­duc­tion is declin­ing. At a time when pub­lish­ers should pro­duce books that are bright and appeal­ing to the eye—by way of con­trast to dig­i­tal text—it is almost as if they are delib­er­ate­ly degrad­ing books so as to dri­ve peo­ple to dig­i­tal texts—from which pub­lish­ers make greater profits.

I recent­ly saw a nov­el which was illus­trat­ed by one of the children’s book world’s impor­tant artists. The illus­tra­tions were fine—if you could see them. Because the paper they were print­ed on was dread­ful. It was not white, but some pulpy gray stuff that ren­dered the art work mud­dy, dull, blur­ring the detail. It was at best, pub­lished thought­less­ly, at worst, with a casu­al indif­fer­ence to the artist, which was noth­ing less than shock­ing. Why? Bad paper is cheaper.

There is art in a book, and there is the art of the book. They need to go together.