Select one of the series listed below and use your local public library or bookstores to investigate it on your own:

Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey
Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar
Junie B. Jones, by Barbara Park

Step 2: Consider

After reading at least 2 titles from the series you’ve chosen, do some basic investigating to determine what tie-ins, book sets, videos, gifts, etc. are available for this series.  Put your web searching skills to use by exploring eBay, Amazon, Google, the publisher’s web site, the author’s web site, etc.  Take a quick tour of your local Toys ‘r Us, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.  Does your series have an interactive web site?  Did you locate calendars, trading cards, games, or other items associated with your series for sale?  Are book sets being sold that bundle several books from the series and sell them together?  Which of the marketing techniques identified by Daniel Hade are being used to sell the series you’re investigating?

Step 3: Write

Next, given what you’ve found through your investigations, write an analysis that explains what conclusions should be drawn about your series and the marketing that surrounds it.  For example, what does it say about a series that has a new book published each year, or even more frequently?  Why would a publisher produce an interactive web site to accompany the series?  If the series has been transformed into a film or tv show, what might this tell us about the marketing of the series?  What should we conclude about the sale of any possible tie-ins?  Then consider our class discussions about the claim, made by authors like Hade, that modern children’s book publishing seeks to market series books because there is great financial profit in doing so.  Should we draw the same conclusions about your series that Hade comes to about most children’s book publishing?

Finally, remember the three cultural attitudes toward children identified by Shavit that we discussed in the first module: 1) they are little adults, 2) they are entertainment for adults, 3) they require education.  These attitudes were common in the past.  Based on what you’ve discovered about the modern children’s series that you’ve explored, explain what we can say about current attitudes toward children.  Do we, in fact, see them as small consumers in training?  How does the research you’ve done help us to understand why we market so heavily to children today?