Do kids really like Dora the Explorer?

Session # 1813: Do kids really like Dora the Explorer?
Todd Kyle, Manager, Churchill Meadows Branch, Mississauga Library System
How do you reconcile quality vs mass appeal in books for your public or school library? What do kids really like, and what do they need?
While Mr. Kyle certainly had an extremely interesting (and very entertaining) lecture regarding the elements of a good work for children and spoke about the difficulties in addressing the requests for books containing the characters in popular culture, he didn’t really get into answering these questions which are usually at the root of collection development in public libraries. The conflict between "give them what they want" and "give them what they need" is an old one, and Mr. Kyle asserts that if we simply give children what they need (quality literature), they will simply forget about what they want (Dora the Explorer) over time. I don’t think this is necessarily true, but I do think Markham should be conservative with the number of items we acquire in the "Television cross-over" genre as there is no telling when these characters will run out of popularity. Also, there is the very valid point that they are not good literature. Mr. Kyle also didn’t seem to speak about marketing strategy at all, but after some thought I think it would be helpful for librarians to compile lists similar to what you find in Chapters or Borders. "If you like Dora the Explorer, then you might like…" or "If you like Bob the Builder, then you might like…" – these lists are the simply the commercial answer to reader’s advisory, but they are very convenient for our "stop and graba book" customers, and if we put them in displays, they may be more effective in getting our youngest readers to find that what they need coincides with what they want, after all.
Megan