Don’t be sniffy about David Walliams’s children’s books – he gets kids off their screens! The comedian-turned-author should be applauded for his success, writes Sally Morris
Even adults will crack a smile at the title of his latest tale, The Beast Of Buckingham Palace. And only a Grinch would begrudge David Walliams the ker-ching of the tills this Christmas as sales from his children’s books top £100million.
He does, after all, get reluctant readers – especially boys – off their iPads and Xboxes, which all agree is a good thing.
Since his first book, The Boy In The Dress, appeared in 2008, he has produced at least a book a year aimed at children from six to 12, as well as a successful range of picture books for younger readers, many of which have been adapted for the screen and stage.
Walliams has, in effect, become a brand that children will demand as each new title appears.
David Walliams has made generated more than £100 million from his 23 children’s books, selling more than 25 million copies
David Walliams attends a BFI Southbank preview of “Ratburger”, Sky 1’s TV adaptation of his book published by HarperCollins, on September 3, 2017 in London
But has this prolific output led to a decline in quality? Some people think so.
Bestselling children’s writer Anthony Horowitz has accused Walliams of ‘writing down’ for children and certainly there’s a difference between his earlier, shorter books and his more recent output.
What distinguished Walliams’s first few books was his combination of the smelly, farty, burpy, snot-ridden humour that children never tire of with a genuine empathy for the child who was different from the crowd, whose family didn’t listen to them or who was frightened by the illness or death of someone they loved. In The Boy In The Dress, a young motherless boy with a lorry driver dad and macho brother wears a dress to school.
Walliams light-heartedly uses that as a metaphor for daring to be different and to express oneself against the pressure to conform. It’s funny, silly and introduces characters who appear regularly in his subsequent stories.
His new novel, The Beast of Buckingham Palace (left), is coming out today. It is tipped to be the Christmas number one, following in the footsteps of 2016’s The Midnight Gang (right) and 2017’s Bad Dad
In his second, Mr Stink, a little girl whose snobbish mother emotionally neglects her in favour of her sister adopts a smelly, homeless tramp who will change not just the family dynamics but teach the prime minister a moral lesson.
And in his first number one bestseller, Gangsta Granny, where a young boy helps his dying Granny pull off a spectacular heist, the underlying message is that old people – whom young children often find dull and irrelevant – have exciting pasts and secrets to share.
And when, inevitably, they eventually die, the sadness will be tinged with having shared something special.
But, as so often happens when authors build up a blindly loyal readership (and earn their publishers millions of pounds), his books have grown longer, less tightly written, the characters have become one-dimensional caricatures and stereotypes, the pages are padded out with long lists of rude words in bigger and bolder type, and the focus on farting and sticky bogey jokes dominates over plot.
Obviously nothing lifts a parent’s spirits more than hearing a child laugh out loud but it’s a shame that snivelling snot squeezes out the more thoughtful and moving underpinning of the earlier books.
Not that this affects Walliams’s sales one jot, of course.
———————————————————————————————————————David Walliams has sold 25MILLION copies of his children’s books raking in more than £100m
David Walliams has made more than £100 million in sales from his children’s books, after selling 25 million copies since his first was published in 2008.
The comedian and former Little Britain star, 48, has written 23 books with his latest one released today.
According to Nielsen BookScan, he has surpassed the £100 million sales mark, joining an exclusive club that includes authors likes JK Rowling and Jacqueline Wilson.
Since the start of 2019, the Britain’s Got Talent judge has already raked in more than £13 million with the publication of books Fing (left) in February, and The World’s Worst Teachers in June
Walliams looks set to score his third Christmas number one next month, with his new novel, The Beast of Buckingham Palace.
He has written 16 story books and seven picture books with his first five believed to have earned him £15 million.
And since the start of 2019, the Britain’s Got Talent judge has already raked in more than £13 million with the publication of books Fing in February, and The World’s Worst Teachers in June.
They are the bestselling Children’s books of the year so far.
His previous Christmas number ones are 2016’s The Midnight Gang, and 2017’s Bad Dad.
His literary style has been compared to Roald Dahl, with the legendary author’s illustrator Quentin Blake drawing for him.
He released The World’s Worst Teachers in June (left) and The World’s Worst Children (right) in 2016
Mr Blake described Walliams’ first children’s book as funny and surprisingly sensitive.
After releasing a new novel every autumn, the TV personality’s fan-base of eight to 12-year-old’s grew steadily.
His second book, Mr Stink, won the People’s Book Prize in 2009 and Gangsta Granny in 2011 became his first book to secure the number one spot in children’s fiction.
It is also his most successful to date and spent 22 weeks at the top of the charts, selling more than 1.3 million copies in paperback alone in the UK.
The Beast of Buckingham Palace is expected to boost his yearly income even more.
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