Two minutes with Danny Katz: can we kill off celebrity kids’ books?

Last year, a global agreement was reached to reduce deforestation and methane emissions. Does this mean an end, finally, to tree-chomping, flatulence-fixated, celebrity-authored children’s books?
D.F., East Kurrajong, NSW

A: As a non-celebrity author of children’s books, I too am appalled by this glut of celebrity-penned, fart-themed bestselling kids’ books. Mostly because they’re deforesting all the planet’s lush, verdant forests that my books should be deforesting, and polluting our cultural atmosphere with vulgar, unearned fart jokes that I should be unearning vulgarly. We non-celeb kids’-book authors just can’t compete; we don’t have the public profile or media savvy that celebrities have. I once did a bookstore appearance and only two kids showed up, both my own. And neither bought my book even though I actually gave them the money.

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So you’re right: we must act IMMEDIATELY to ban celebrity farty kids’ books. It’s the only way to save this planet, save our children and save the careers of bitter, struggling, non-celeb authors like me. Instead, I propose that bookstores stock nothing but educational, eco-conscious kids’ books, like the one I’ve just written, inspired by your question. It’s called This Book Was Once a Beautiful Tree and it goes like this: “This book was once a beautiful tree / It lived in the forest and grew happily / Standing so high with its daddy and mummy / Then a man with an axe chopped it right in the tummy / Whacked it and thwacked it and lopped off its head / Hit it and split it until it was dead / Drove it away on a truck, and then, gulp! / Mashed up its body into a flat pulp / Tattooed its skin with black ink, and look! / Wow, that dead tree’s the book that you’re holding right now.” Now, that’s a bestseller.

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