The Boss can belt and the Boss can croon but can he tell a bedtime story? Writing anthems which have been adopted en masse by thousand-strong audiences and solo by runners pushing themselves to to the limit, and almost everyone else between, is a good test of any writer. But even that may not be enough for a picture bookto.
Despite their brevity and sometimes banality a great picture book is one of the hardest texts of all to create. Will it appeal to both a three-year-old and its parents? Can it be read night after night after night without the parents dropping a word? Woe betide any parent who does so. And can it first grab a child's undivided attention and then send him or her into a dreamless sleep while keeping the parent entertained time after time?
Bruce Springsteen apparently knows books like that. His memories of hearing his mother read Kathryn Jackson's Brave Cowboy Bill (now sadly out of print so it didn't pass the above test, despite the chord it struck for the young Bruce) inspired his song Outlaw Pete which he is now turning into his own picture book. But maybe it was Richard Scarry's illustrations he loved so much? There's certainly not much in Outlaw Pete's original lyrics for Springsteen to draw on. A baby who's been in jail for three months by the age of six months would never pass the children's rights censor at work in every picture-book editor, while the older Pete's marriage to a Navajo girl after his terrifying vision of his own death is stretching the parameters of the bedtime story.
Nonetheless Springsteen could be onto a winner perhaps because he recognises that picture books need serious stuff in them. Outlaw Pete's remorse at his wicked ways and his redemption after he gives them up fit comfortably with picture books. Tearaway babies for whom all comes out well in the end have a good track record in stories for the young. They appeal to the childish delight in being "naughty" and they reassure the parents that the "challenging" behaviour of the day won't last forever. Beatrix Potter got it in The Story of Peter Rabbit, while Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are continues to delight children even while their parents fret at the cruelty of a child being sent to his room for bad behaviour.
Springsteen isn't the first of the never-grow-old rock generation to turn to a bedtime story. Ringo Starr's An Octopus's Garden was well reviewed by a seven-year-old member of our children's books website. It's a different kind of immortality. Being loved by babies and their young parents can keep a "legend" alive long after they really, really can't hold the stage. Madonna's The English Roses and its sequels immediately became collectors' items, despite getting sniffy reviews from "real" children's authors and failing to embed themselves in the literature for the young. Dolly Parton has tried it, too, and with no more luck. Both fell right into the Mary Poppins "spoonful or sugar helps the medicine go down" trap. Let's hope it is not one that will tempt Springsteen. After all, as he has always told us: "baby we are born to run".
