“You have to shoot to see the trees”. On the stand of the Hélium publishing house installed at the Salon du livre jeunesse de Montreuil, Tina and her mother Helena have fun handling a pop-up. Mother and daughter carefully observe the mechanisms inside In the sloth’s forest, a book that traces the story of a sloth living in a forest victim of deforestation. As the pages turn, fewer trees unfold. And then, nothing more.
On the stalls of the fair’s stands, children’s books dealing with ecology are numerous to have slipped between the fantastic and the adventure novels. For several years, this theme has comfortably settled on the shelves of bookstores. You only have to stroll between the aisles to notice that few publishing houses have not taken up the subject. Some are even specialized in the issue.
At a time when the preservation of the planet and its ecosystem is one of the main global issues, it is inevitable to talk about it with children. The children’s book addresses the issue gently, to sensitize them without sinking them into eco-anxiety. A brief overview of a market in full bloom.
“I had never seen a blanket like this. It’s funny and original!”, Compliments a father, leafing through Alone, ugly and abandoned by Clémence Sabbagh. The editor, Frédéric Lisak, could not hope for a better compliment. Twenty years ago, he created the Plume de Carotte publishing house with a specific goal: to educate children on ecological issues. And to meet this challenge, the director of the publishing house has a golden rule: to entertain to challenge. “I am convinced that we can only raise awareness if there are engines of pleasure, discovery, curiosity, humor and especially no injunction”, He argues.
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“And this book on transformed waste is the perfect example. Rather than saying, don’t throw your papers on the ground, which is in my opinion at best ineffective, at worst anxious, we go through humor and poetry which are great engines to reconnect with nature”, He continues with his hand extended towards the cited book. Same story with the Hélium publishing house, which uses humor and documentaries to inform its young audience. “This book for example makes it possible to identify the breeds of birds. Once we know them, we pay more attention to them, we start to hear them and think of them”, Explains Flora. By learning about the world around them, children are more likely to take care of it.
To attract little hands, the editors rely on a playful presentation that combines pedagogy and originality. The pop-up book ticks all the boxes. These animated books which contain mechanisms which allow sets to come out of the book are very popular. “We have the same at home, in Italian. But she still enjoys leafing through it as much, as if it was the first time ” Tina’s mother tells us. However, this kind of printing is generally not done in Europe. “The problem with pop-ups and cardboard books is that they mostly come from China. For us, it is always important that the editorial line of the book corresponds to its production.”, Points out Sarah, bookseller on the Actes Sud stand.
If the children’s book is mainly intended for young readers, its purchase often remains the responsibility of the parents. Anxious to awaken their child to the preservation of nature, it is generally them who turn to this type of work. “It is a small and already concerned audience that is heading towards his books. Upstream, they were already asking themselves the question. I don’t have the impression that we spontaneously come to ecological books”Sarah remarks, after reflection. An opinion shared by Sarah Hamon, editor and co-founder of La cabane bleue, a young eco-responsible publishing house that deals with ecological issues.
If the themes of the imagination and the fantastic remain the favorites of young bibliophiles, parents will tend to be seduced by books with didactic aims, which confront children with social and environmental issues. “The ecological book has an educational virtue. And among adults, there is always a desire for education. Parents like when there is a moral, when the book is useful. The imagination has always been appreciated by children, but I have realized for many years that a large part of adults consider the imagination as a headlong rush”, Reports Thomas Glorieu, bookseller at Folie Ink and Contre-temps. “They say to themselves’ I want my kid to be ready for today’s world and I don’t want him to take refuge in the imagination. What I find terrible as an observation ”, continues the latter who faces a lot of anxious parents.
But if this theme appeals to adults so much, it is because it also allows them to educate themselves in turn. “I have been concerned with environmental issues for a very long time and I am heading towards this type of book for my children, but also for myself. It allows me to revise the fundamentals”, Confides Valérie, mother of two teenage girls. “Everything that is documentary, adults take as popularization to pass on to their child because it is beyond them ”, adds Thomas Glorieu.
Twenty years ago, when Frédéric Lisak created his publishing house, the theme of environmental preservation was not a promising subject. If the children’s book has always liked to stage animals, to talk about the nature that surrounds us and the diversity of fauna and flora, there was no question of approaching the question so head-on. A reflection of our society, children’s literature has only recently taken hold of it. “For 5-10 years, we have seen a production clearly oriented towards this problem. Whether in the early learning book, in the album, in the narration, in the documentary, in the non-fiction, or in the novel”, Observes Thomas Glorieu, who worked for many years in Montreuil.
For Sarah Hamon, the trend is much more recent. “When we created La Cabane bleue, two years ago now, things were starting to shudder. We saw more and more books in bookstores. But here, clearly, we see the offer exploding everywhere, among large and small. For some, it’s a real commitment, for others, it’s pure greenwashing”, She believes.
“Very often in editing when we see that something is working, everyone goes. Like when we realized that making books with LGBTQ characters was important”Adds Sarah the bookseller. A mimicry that ends up clogging the market. “It is a recurring problem, we are talking about the Harry Potter locomotive that triggered the taste for witchcraft and magic. Publishers want to grab a market very quickly, but people aren’t necessarily that interested. And we as a bookseller, at the end of the chain, we have to sort it out ”, testifies Thomas Glorieu.
To make this choice, some book professionals carefully inspect the way the publishing house acts and the importance it places on the subject. “We know for a fact that some houses are surfing on this trend”, Confides the bookseller. Others are fully engaged, and this from conception. “Our books were made in France and that’s one of the reasons we don’t do pop-up books. We are working on an identical format for all our books, which allows us to waste less paper and less ink at our printer. And that allows us to offer books at the most accessible prices possible.”, Emphasizes the creator of La cabane bleue.
Similar commitment from Plume de carrotte: “We have been working towards environmental quality for over twelve years, whether in the choice of paper, ink, but also printing distance. We only work with French and Belgian printers ”.
“It is above all not the trial of publishers who do not reach the same level of requirement. I remind you that in the children’s book there are certain printing techniques that nobody does in Europe. It is only very recently that we have started to pay attention to all these aspects. In the publishing world, there is still a lot to think aboutr ”, concludes Thomas Glorieu.