Could a Media Tie-In Ever Win the Geisel?

In any given cart of beginning reader books that I purchase for my library, I've noticed that one-third to one-half of the books that I buy are media tie-ins: books related to some themed property, movie, or TV show. Kids like these books, with their bright, familiar characters, and will ask for them by name. They generally circulate well, at least as long as the show they're based on is popular, and publishers crank them out at a prodigious rate. Everyone is happy. But could one of these books ever win the Geisel?

Take, for instance, Peg + Cat: The Camp Problem (Candlewick, 2018). The Peg + Cat franchise started out as a book series, but quickly made the jump to TV, and this book is based on one of the show's episodes. A closer look reveals two of the problems that media tie-ins face for award consideration: authorship and originality. Authorship of media tie-ins can be tricky to determine: the names on the cover are Jennifer Oxley and Billy Aronson, the original illustrator and author, but a look at the CIP data indicates that the text is by Andrea Cascardi. Moreover, the book is based on a television script by Meryl Schumacher. That actually puts the book out of contention for the Geisel right away, as the criteria states, "There are no limitations as to the character of the book considered except that it will be original…" Is a book based on a TV episode "original?" It's hard to imagine any committee making a case for this.

But what about media tie-ins not based on a movie or TV episode? These are rarer, but they do exist – books about the Shopkins come to mind, and some Barbie titles. The committee would have to make a decision about whether such books qualify as "original" if based on characters from a commercial property – my feeling is that this would be an uphill battle. Even if the text was deemed original, what about the illustrations?

Suppose such a book existed – a media tie-in with original text and illustrations? For the committee to select it as the most distinguished book for beginning readers of the year, it would have to embody the criteria with a high degree of excellence . . . and, to be brutally honest, few media tie-ins do. A quick scan of such titles reveals complicated vocabulary without repetition to reinforce newly acquired words, difficult fonts and text placement, and complex sentence structure. Some are better than others, of course, but few rise above their type. All of them, of course, succeed in one particular area: children are highly motivated to read about their favorite characters, and that can often compensate for shortcomings in the books' writing and design. That's where these books come in handy, of course – in providing reading practice that is appealing to child readers. Media tie-ins are useful books, but could one ever win the Geisel? In my opinion, doubtful.