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By:
Inderjit Deogun,
on 10/13/2011
Blog:
The Pen Stroke | A Publishing Blog
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What am I reading now? The Tree Girl by Darlene Twerdochlib
The New York Times‘ Maria Tatar published an article entitled “No More Adventures in Wonderland” on Sunday, October 9, 2011. The premise of the piece is the prevalence of darkness in children’s literature. Tatar contends that “[c]hildren today get an unprecedented dose of adult reality in their books, sometimes without the redemptive beauty, cathartic humor and healing magic of an earlier time.”
My issue with Tatar’s article is not her vehemence against darkness; I made my thoughts clear on the subject with my post Darkness Too Visible. Instead, my issue springs from the books she calls upon to give validity to her argument: J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter, Philip Pullman‘s “His Dark Materials” and Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games. Tatar uses these books to exhibit that “the savagery we offer children today is more unforgiving than it once was … we have stories about children who struggle to survive.” The truth is, these books are detrimental to her argument because they do not fall under the genre of children’s literature. They come under the umbrella of young adult literature.
The book industry is a business like any other and the aforementioned books wouldn’t be published if there wasn’t a market for them. So, perhaps, the issue isn’t the existence of darkness in children’s literature but rather why it is so prevalent in young adult literature.
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What am I reading now? Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
On Sunday, July 10, 2011, CTV aired an episode of Hiccups entitled ”Novel Idea.” Here’s a brief summary:
After the top mystery author at Haddison House casts aspersions on Millie’s Grumpaloo books, she decides to fully explore her authorship by writing a novel.
Ah, sweet ignorance. Some people truly do believe that writing children’s literature is just a matter of stringing a few words together. In fact, you’d be surprised at just how often I am faced with such remarks.
They are always quick to say, “How hard can it be?” Well, at times, it can be impossibly hard. The truth of the matter is that a children’s author is always working with a number of parameters in mind.
An author of picture books is restricted by both page count and word count. Writers of chapter books are constantly aware of their target audience’s reading comprehension level. With young adult literature, comes the concern of darkness. An issue that made waves recently with Meghan Cox Gurdon’s article “Darkness Too Visible” for The Wall Street Journal. And that’s, as they say, just the tip of the iceberg.
A children’s author must forge a connection with his or her reader while operating within the most rigid of boundaries. Sometimes all an author has is eight hundred words to create magic. Therefore, every word must have a purpose. Only a select few possess the skill it takes to write something that will linger in a child’s consciousness long after the book is closed. Those who do, deserve far more than they receive.
