Arts Brief: Unconventional Reading
Hillary Clinton might be down, but is she really out?
On Aug. 26, just in time for the Democratic National Convention, our junior senator will once again go head-to-head with presidential hopeful Barack Obama; but this time the battle will take place on the bookshelves. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight, a childrens book based on the life of the former First Lady, will be hitting shelves that day, but so will another kids book, Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope. Each illustrated book recounts the story of a politician's rise from childhood to the national stage.
So let the debate begin: Who will the crucial K-5 demographic choose as their standard bearer? And what metric will be used to determine the winner? What if Obama's book sells more titles nationwide but Hillary's book sells more in big states like California and New York?
According to Paul Crichton, Director of Publicity at Simon & Schuster, while Obama's ascendancy to the nomination may give the Senator from Illinois an edge in sales over the Senator from New York, "I'm not going to go on record making any predictions." Which goes to show that even publicists learned the pitfalls of prognostication during the long Democratic primary season.