I came up with this idea for a book called 15 Ways to Jump a Shark. The title is a bit like click bait, a listicle if you will and designed to be attention-grabbing, something you might see as a headline from a questionable news outlet or something like that . But still just fun, and to me engaging and curious.
The idea of course comes from the concept of ‘jumping the shark’, which comes from the episode of Happy Days where the Fonz aka Arthur Fonzirelli played by Henry Winkler decked out in his trademark leather jacket and all is going to jump a shark on water skis.
I remember watching this episode when I was a kid, when they seemed to always have Happy Days reruns on every weeknight. I wasn’t particularly fond of Happy Days, but it was on and was something to watch. Maybe I was just waiting for The Simpsons to come on, or something. We didn’t have a huge choice of television stations back in the 90s in my house.
Well, the term jumping the shark really then means going too far and then the decline thereafter, but this is what inspired the term. On Happy Days this was the point where they went too far. This was a ratings grab. By the time the shark jumping episode aired the show was in the fifth season and viewership was down a bit. And apparently the show never quite recovered from this point. So Jumping the shark is said to mark the decline of the show, that they went too far and it was all downhill from there on. I guess they were all under pressure to come up with something crazy and outlandish, and someone suggested, I would love to know who, “let’s have the Fonz jump a shark on water skis.” And somehow, they got on board. Was this the best idea that they had? Maybe. How crap were all the other ideas? And how much convincing was needed to get the execs and everyone on board.
Is it in and of itself a bad idea? Maybe not. It probably worked at the time and got more eyeballs watching. And if you know anything about me, I like to at least entertain some crazy ideas. And I think we should explore and understand this more, that is, crazy ideas that maybe go too far and the art of convincing others to get on board with those crazy ideas. There seems to be a skill or science in that alone. Or do people just play it too safe these days and we are afraid to even try and jump a shark?
So, what is my book really about?
Well, it is about having fun with a crazy idea, which is fine. But then I got to thinking…Is it really a critique on kids’ books in general, that are now so gimmicky and yet missing the fun of trying to jump the shark. Did we already jump the shark and now things are on the downhill slope into suckyness?
You know with all these completely didactic books about emotions and feelings and telling kids how to be, think and act. Well, that is post shark jumping in my opinion. Are we out of ideas? Are there really no more sharks left to try and jump? Or are we just sacred to even attempt a shark jump.
This idea, this future book is not meant to be serious. It is fun and silly for the sake of being fun and silly. And if you know kids like I know kids, kids like things that are fun and silly, because they themselves like to have fun and be silly. They don’t want to be told how they should feel, how they should think or how they should be. We need to give them a bit more credit than that.
So, let’s step back a bit here — or even jump back over the shark that is there swimming in the water — before we head too far down the path of no return. Let’s continue to be over the top, a little ridiculous and definitely, fun and silly.
Now don’t get me wrong, I still think it is ok to have a message or serious idea or lesson within a kids book, but let the kids figure that bit out. Don’t spell it out so obviously for them or God forbid you put in in the title exactly what the lesson to be learned is. Blurg!, sorry I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Surely, we can be a bit more creative than that, there are plenty of other metaphorical sharks we can jump over before we decline the entire genre into the depths of redundancy.
So, I ask….How will you go about trying to jump over a shark?