It seems like just about every late-night star has written a children’s book. Head to the kid lit section at Barnes & Noble or on Amazon and you’ll quickly spot them: Trevor Noah’s just-released picture book, Into the Uncut Grass; Jimmy Fallon’s latest holiday tale, 5 More Sleeps ‘til Halloween; and first-time-author Kate McKinnon’s middle grade novel, The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, to name some recent examples.
Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers have all published kids’ books as well. And Jill Twiss, a former writer for Last Week Tonight and The Amber Ruffin Show, is also a children’s book author (her parody book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, was produced in collaboration with John Oliver and co.).
To be sure, this phenomenon isn’t limited to late-night stars. Over the years, plenty of celebrities have gotten into the children’s book game. Still, when it comes to the celebrity-to-children’s book pipeline, it’s a curious thing that those known for their work on late-night TV would be so overrepresented.
So what is it about the two genres that encourages so much overlap? While they’re geared toward vastly different audiences, there’s actually a lot of common ground to be found between writing for late night and writing for kids.
First, the obvious: At their core, both mediums require humor, creativity, and an unabashed sense of silliness. This might be why someone like Fallon, who doesn’t consider himself an “author” despite having made The New York Times Best Sellers list several times, feels so at home within the genre.
“It’s the most bizarre and unexpected ride that I ever could even imagine,” Fallon told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022. “I did the first book, Your Baby’s First Word Will Be Dada, as kind of a joke. Because I thought it’d be kind of funny to see if an experiment to make your baby say ‘dada’ before ‘mama’ could work. I swear that’s all it was—and then it took off.”
When you look at it from Fallon’s perspective, brainstorming an idea for a funny picture book suddenly doesn’t seem all that different from crafting a solid monologue joke.
“There is a real rhythm to writing jokes that serves you well in picture books,” Twiss told LateNighter. “The knowledge that shorter is better. The importance of clarity and making sure that your writing is easy to understand… I think a childlike mind helps in writing jokes. Seeing things as though you’re seeing them for the first time can lead you to a perspective or joke that no one else has thought of.”
McKinnon, echoing a similar sentiment, says she was “surprised” by how much writing her first book reminded her of performing on Saturday Night Live. “I felt like I was improvising,” she said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It felt like sitting in a room and writing a sketch for SNL, but then you just have a lot more time to revise.”
Another commonality is that late-night comedy shows and children’s books can both serve as vehicles for taking serious, complicated, or dark topics and turning them into something a little more digestible. Take Kimmel’s picture book, The Serious Goose, which he wrote in the wake of his youngest child, Billy, undergoing heart surgery as a newborn. Or consider Meyers, who wrote a children’s book about fear (I’m Not Scared, You’re Scared) at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were living through a really scary time,” the Late Night host reflected in a 2022 interview with NPR. “You want to believe that the human spirit will rise to the occasion and will be courageous, especially when their courage will benefit others who are in danger.”
In the same vein, Meyers sees late-night television as a way to help people get through tough times—himself included.
“I’ve always said, in difficult times, the show does more for me than I feel like I’m doing for the audience,” Meyers told People in 2022. “We just had two weeks off for the Olympics and that’s when I don’t know what to do with my fears or my anxieties, because I don’t get to go out and tell jokes about it.”
Whether it comes in the form of a picture book or a monologue, this kind of storytelling and humor is as relevant and necessary as ever. During the first Trump administration, Stephen Colbert took the president’s dismal response to Hurricane Florence and turned it into an amusing spoof book, Whose Boat Is This Boat? (all proceeds of which went to hurricane relief organizations), which is the epitome of making lemonade out of lemons. It’s also something only a late-night star might think to do.
