Impress, but it’s true: today The boys make “scroll” before knowing how to read. And in this context, Children’s books carry out an unequal battle. But that does not overwhelm the market, which redoubles the bet by multiplying formats, thematizing the everyday and transforming reading into a sensory experience.
With your own format
In the Catapulta publishing house, the recipe to capture attention does not go through passing fashions or to sign influencers. The key, they say, is to offer diverse options that respond to the interests of the boys and the possibilities of each family. In their catalog they live together information books (like the new collection “The world of “which starts with dinosaurs and promises more deliveries) with enlightened stories. The editions also vary: hard or soft cover, with or without accessories, so that there is always an option.
“We want the boys and parents reading and playing with booksand not with the phone, ”they explain from the publishing house. That search translates into original formats: there are books with stuffed animals, magnets, stickers, ink that changes color or activates with water. And even if they do not work with figures born from networks, their events in The Book Fair They show that children’s literature summons: Nik, Pablo Bernasconi or Fernando de Vedia They fill rooms and sign for hours. The challenge is double: surprise with quality and hold what they know it works.
This attention to the format is replicated in the Penguin Random House catalog. Special editions (with hard covers, inked songs, cases or illustrated finishes) mark trend abroad and begin to make their way to the local market. “Possibly, with the entry of more imported books and the improvement in printing techniques, that type of Premium editions also begins to grow in Argentina,” Antichizes Amelia Macedo, literary director of children’s and youth books. The content also responds to interests well defined by age strip: in early childhood classics such as María Elena Walsh coexist with authors who work issues such as diversity or emotions.
Emotional management, in fact, became a key criterion when choosing what to put in front of the eyes of the boys. Penguin interprets it with books that, in addition to entertaining, seek to teach to name what happens inside. And although they do not follow the influencers line as a general strategy, they also recognize the cases in which this convergence does work: Lyna Vallejos, with their saga “An abnormal family “it is one of the few local authors that combines digital community, humor and narrative for first readers. In that balance between innovative formats, content with purpose and editorial phenomena with its own identity, the children’s book continues to fight.
Visual focus
The visual is also fundamental. In the universe of V&R editors, the secret is in the balance between what catches the boys and what parents and teachers approve. Colorful tapas, visual genres such as the graphic novel or books with flaps and eyelashes, and the usual themes (dinosaurs, humanized animals, detectives, adventures) coexist with a sustained boom of the informative book. But it is not the old school manual; Today that the information is available to a click, another game is proposed. “It is the book of curiosity, of the data with which I can surprise my family and friends”, They explain. They appeal to the fragmentary, to the visual, to that rapid stimulus that coexists with digital habits but does not renounce the paper.
One of the most representative cases are the “Pilar newspapers”, the most successful series of the children’s segment. With a protagonist who travels around the world and provides data from the places he visits, combines narrative, dissemination and visual design. “Gender hybridity is also very present and sells a lot,” they say. The same principle applies to books for the little ones, designed with resistant materials, intense colors and animated mechanisms. Even Colors -colored books or stickers have a prominent place in sales. Because work always moves between two forces: the one who looks at art and the one who looks at the market.
That same balance between stimulus, content and emotional bond seeks the Athenaeum. “All books are interactive, to the extent that they propose active reading (Solo, two or group), but those with flaps, games or concrete activities give very good results, ”explains Marina von der Pahlen, editorial coordinator. In their catalog they live titles that help manage emotions, which promote self -love or that address family situations such as the arrival of a brother or fear of sleeping. All of them have something in common: they are well told, well illustrated, well illustrated, well illustrated.
According to Von der Pahlen, the change in the market has been marked. Today stories are sought that accompany each child on their reading path, which transmit values and, above all, that enable tools to face everyday conflicts. Bibliodiversity, celebrates, is healthy: game books, books that excite and books that teach without underline coexist.
Leave footprint
The screens entertain and stimulate, but they rarely leave a lasting brand. In Lecurita Ediciones, the goal is that: Publish books that move, sow questions, resonate. “We want when a boy, a girl – even a baby – finished reading one of our books, is a pretty feeling, something that resonates him inside, although he cannot put him in words,” explains Celina Alonso, editorial director.
Here are not governed by formulas or algorithms. His editing criteria is handmade and deep. They take care of the encounter between text and illustration as an alchemy, they trust diversity as a path and think each project as an invitation: to read, to feel, to imagine. And they celebrate that books made in Argentina today are also read in France, Germany, Korea or the United States. Because if there is something that children’s literature continues to demonstrate (even in times of scarce attention and infinite “scroll) is that there is no better technology than a well told story.
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