LITTLE ROCK — Gov. Mike Huckabee said Tuesday that the notion that he capitalized on the schoolyard shooting deaths of five people when he wrote the book Kids Who Kill is "ludicrous."
The $11.99 paperback, due in bookstores this weekend, opens with a graphic synopsis of the March 24 shooting deaths at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro.
Huckabee was paid $25,000 for the book. If royalties top $25,000, he will get a percentage of the sales.
Huckabee said he started writing the book last summer. He said the book "was not about Jonesboro" and has only "fleeting references" to the Westside shootings.
When asked by a reporter if he felt the book was akin to making money off the tragedy, Huckabee responded:
"No more so than it would that you're capitalizing on it when you write stories about Jonesboro and sell ads and sell the paper."
In the first paragraph of the book, Huckabee wrote:
"Just after lunch on March 24, 1998, a sudden burst of gunfire cut through the crowded schoolyard of Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Four minutes and twenty-seven bullets later, fifteen bodies lay bleeding on the ground."
Promotional materials put out by the publisher include several references to the shootings.
The promotional flier starts:
"No matter who you are or where you live, you heard the news -- the horrifying crime that took place in the quiet little town of Jonesboro, Arkansas. Children, allegedly conscious of their actions, opened fire on their own crowded playground and killed four little girls and one teacher."
Huckabee said over and over Tuesday that "the book is not about Jonesboro."
"I've heard that allegation, and that's utterly ridiculous," he said. "It's obviously made by people who haven't read the book because Jonesboro is merely a passing reference."
"The book is about the overall kind of culture that creates an atmosphere of violence for kids," he added.
"It's not about the Jonesboro shootings."
Huckabee added that "some could say" that media outlets "are unfairly profiting because they are covering things and promoting it and teasing it and encouraging people to pick up their newspapers and read it."
Huckabee said the publisher Broadman and Holman of Nashville, Tenn., approached him with the idea of writing his first book, Character Is the Issue, which was published last summer. In that book, Huckabee gave his account of how he was elevated from lieutenant governor to governor in the wake of Gov. Jim Guy Tucker's conviction on federal fraud and conspiracy charges.
Huckabee said Broadman and Holman also approached him about writing Kids Who Kill, which he co-wrote with George Grant of Nashville.
"If people feel you have a message and they are willing to come to you and ask you to put it into to print, and you have an opportunity to do that, you would be foolish not to if you believe your ideas are worth sharing," the governor said.
Huckabee was running for the Republican Party nomination for governor around the same time he would have been writing the book.
On May 19, he easily defeated Gene McVay of Fort Smith in the GOP primary. Huckabee faces Democrat Bill Bristow in the Nov. 3 general election.
Huckabee said he could run for office and write the book at the same time because "I don't sleep a lot at night."
He also said much of the material used in the book came from "articles and speeches that I've already done."
The book has more than 300 endnotes, citations from numerous other works containing the words of assorted figures, from presidents to current authors.
Advertised as 192 pages, an advanced copy of the book had 180 pages, including a 14-page appendix of two recent Huckabee radio speeches and one of his news columns.
Huckabee said he plans to use the money from the book to help pay for his children's college education. John Mark, 21, is a student at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. David, 17, graduated last month from Parkview High School in Little Rock and is thinking about going to Arkansas State University in Jonesboro in the fall.v
Copyright © 1998, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.