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Mickey's house.

Article Excerpt
There's something heartbreaking about the idea of a book published with the foreknowledge that it will never stand the test of time. There are obvious clues: for one, the publisher doesn't pony up for good-quality paper or binding materials--why bother if the book is destined for the recycling bin? Talk about a shelf life ...

There are also less external signs of a born-to-be-disposed book, such as a surplus of trendy expressions ("What's up with that?") and pop-cultural references (Shaq; J.Lo.) that won't sit well with readers some years hence. Then there's the feeling that a story is formulaic to a near-mathematical degree. I remember being unnerved upon learning that the authors of some series romance novels are required to get to the kiss by, say, page thirty-seven, to the bodice-ripping by page eighty-four, and so on. Heaven forbid writing by numbers would pervade the children's book world.

As it happens, VOLO--an imprint of Disney Press--creates physically flimsy, pop-reference-strewn, prefab reads for middle graders in the form of tie-ins to the popular Disney Channel sitcoms Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven, and Phil of the Future. To evaluate these books is, to a large extent, to evaluate the TV shows, as the texts are all adaptations of televised episodes. Most of the plots contain a subplot involving (and here's a brilliant bit of age and gender cross-marketing) the main character's younger sibling of the opposite sex. This plot-plus-subplot structure may be enough for the network, but not for the publishing house of Mickey Mouse. Each Disney Channel tie-in book I read contains two discrete stories that, despite their "part one" and "part two" labels, bear no relationship to each other: each is an adaptation of a different episode of the TV show. Further fattening the space between each book's covers are several-page teasers promoting the next title in the series. Even with the teaser, the longest book I read was 136 pages.

It...

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