Kids lit grows up

Inspired by Harry Potter, bestselling authors Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Carl Hiaasen and Isabel Allende are spearheading a renaissance in books that enchant readers of all ages.

By Charles Taylor

Sep 21, 2002 | When I was a kid, I was too busy reading grown-up books (mostly junk) to pay much attention to children's literature. I assumed that kids lit was what people wanted me to like rather than what I really did like. So by the time I reached my 20s, I had all sorts of treasures waiting for me. Among them were the books of Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Even if I had read children's literature as a child, Burnett's most famous novel, "The Secret Garden," was considered a girl's book and not something little boys read. When I finally got around to it in the late '80s, I loved it so much that when I finished, I immediately picked up a copy of Burnett's "A Little Princess." I was reading that on the bus one morning when I noticed a businessman in his 40s sitting beside me and eyeing the book. Finally, I nervously allowed my eyes to meet his only to hear him say, "It's a great book, isn't it?" He went on to praise Frances Hodgson Burnett's writing and told me how much he had enjoyed reading her books to his own daughter.

The reasons so many adults are reading books written for children seem pretty simple. A good book is a good book is a good book. What holds true about movies made for children is also true of books written for them: There is no truly good one that adults can't enjoy as well. It may also be that for adult readers, kids books offer the strong, straightforward storytelling that reminds them of why they first started to read fiction.

The adult readership for children's books stands to become even larger this fall as some writers with certifiable literary standing and large adult followings publish kids books. Neil Gaiman's (truly scary) "Coraline" is already in the stores and on the charts. And in the next few weeks will follow books from Michael Chabon, Carl Hiaasen, Isabel Allende and Clive Barker. It's a fair bet that readers who loved "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," or who count "The House of the Spirits" among their favorite novels, or who wait greedily for their yearly dose of Carl Hiaasen (I stand accused), will pick up these writers' new works, regardless of whom they were written for. And established writers aren't the only ones getting into the act. The veteran rappers L.L. Cool J and Doug E. Fresh also have children's books coming out soon.

Obviously, the success of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has made it easier for authors to work in children's literature without risking a smaller audience or worrying about being taken seriously. Chabon says that Rowling's success allowed him to go to his agent with his idea for a children's book, and "instead of saying, as she might have done a few years ago, 'Please just take a year of your writing life and flush it down the toilet," she said, 'Hmm. Interesting idea! Go for it!'"

Daniel Handler, who, under the nom de plume Lemony Snicket, has achieved wide success with his riotously dour "A Series of Unfortunate Events," isn't certain that Rowling's success translates into newfound respect for children's literature. But, he says, "It does make it an exciting time to be writing such things. Another children's author I know compared it to playing rock 'n' roll in the '60s -- it's a time when children's literature is part of the zeitgeist, which results in a lot of experimentation and innovation."

The main thing Rowling's success seems to have done for writers venturing into children's literature is to allow them the means of satisfying a desire that already existed. Michael Chabon, whose new "Summerland" is his first novel for children, cautions about separating "a publishing phenomenon" from a literary one. "Adult writers," says Chabon, "especially in Britain, have always written, or considered writing, for children."

He cites C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Roald Dahl, E.B. White, Dodie Smith, Mordecai Richler, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling and Salman Rushdie. You could also tack on Ian Fleming ("Chitty Chitty Bang Bang") and the great Peter O' Donnell, who wrote the Modesty Blaise novels and kids books like "Moonlit Journey" and "Pinkie Goes South." Paula Fox, an author currently enjoying a revival (her memoir "Borrowed Finery" was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award and selected as one of the year's best books by the New York Times Book Review), has written for children for years -- of her 21 kids books "How Many Miles to Babylon?" impressed me, when I read it as a child, as the grimmest book I'd ever encountered.

It's partly the memory of the potency of their childhood reading that prompts many adult authors to try their hand at the form. Handler says, "You never love a book the way you love a book when you're 10. No matter how much I admire the work of Nabokov or Murakami, I'm not going to reread 'Lolita' or 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' nearly as many times as I reread 'Harriet the Spy' in third grade." (It might be interesting to see what part "Harriet the Spy," a book about the pleasures of voyeurism if ever there was one, played in the development of future film critics. I know of at least three who worshipped it as kids.)

Next Page: Why Gaiman's "Coraline" succeeds, and Isabel Allende's kids book stinks

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