(Note: At the time I wrote this blog article, I was sitting underneath a tarp in the middle of North Carolina wilderness. I have not made changes to the article since, aside from minor proofreading. A little shabby, but still not bad for being in the wilderness for six days at the time.)
What makes a good children's fiction? Is it the simplicity? The safety? The charm? What separates an adult's fiction from a children's fiction?
In my view, a good children's fiction must be enjoyed by an adult just as much as a child. There isn't much that separates children's fiction from adult's fiction other than the arbitrary decision that one is "for adults" and the other is "for children".
One may say that a children's fiction must be about a child in order to be enjoyed by a child. As can be determined from Disney movies over the ages, this is not true. The majority of disney's movies happen to be about teenage (Belle, adult Simba, Aladdin, Ariel) or adult protagonists (Finding Nemo's Marvin, Hercules, Tarzan, even UP is about an old man). A children's fiction can be just as easily about adults as an adults fiction can be about children. One may say that the Disney movies may be about adults because adults are role models to children, but I don't think that's the case. I think children relate to characters like Aladdin and Tarzan because they have a nature often found in children: youth and charm. Contrasted with the nature of their respective antagonists, this is even more obvious, as the antagonist of Tarzan is a cruel man with no appreciation for nature and other people, and Jafar is a man overrun with greed and selfishness. (Funnily enough, these qualities are both negative side effects of growing up and into the world.) Children like to see the adults who are still in touch with their inner children beat the ones that aren't. (Hades in Hercules might be a special case, however, as he's still quite a childish and fun-loving guy. Maybe that's why he's a popular Disney antagonist.) The reason why adults love the same fiction is because they themselves are still in touch with their inner children.
The idea that children's fiction must be simple, pleasurable and devoid of a mature theme is utter crap. Good characters don't have to avoid dying or suffering. Children are more capable of handling death than adults may think, and if they are experiencing death in their life, seeing it in fiction helps them deal with it. See Mufasa's death in The Lion King, which is a tear jerker for any viewer. Although Mufasa does "come back" in the form of a spirit, this does not minimize the emotional effect. If a major, lovable character like Mufasa can die, then potentially so can any protagonist.
Death isn't the only mature theme that can be explored in children's fiction, however. What about death en masse? Survival? Sacrifice? Fear? The light novel series Animorphs is about all of these. Animorphs may not be the best-written series in the world, but it has many good parts. It circles around a parasitic alien invasion, and, instead of scratching the surface of this idea, delves deep into it. The protagonists are forced to hurt and kill innocent people who are controlled by the parasites, and they know it all to well. This is a popular children's series that has spanned over 50 volumes and multiple companion novels.
The trickiest perception of children's fiction to tackle is the sterilization of the world to make it suitable to portray to children. What do we do with things like sex? Swearing? Nudity? All of these are good and well in adult's fiction, but obviously avoided like the plague in children's fiction. Now due t the very nature of the stories told, most of it isn't even necessary. After all, why have a protagonist swear when it isn't even in his nature to swear? On the other hand, you have stories like Harry Potter (although the latter novels are very much written for teens) where there are characters who can and will swear but end up being censored anyway. (Until the latter novels, when Ron's mom, of all people, openly swears) One example is Ronald Weasely calling Professor Snape something foul enough for Hermione to scold him, but it isn't actually said what he called him. (Most likely 'wanker' or 'arsehole') It's possible this was done for humorous effect, but it wasn't quite played that way. Animorphs runs into this same issue with gore and violence. The prose will graze its edge and imply that someone's had was sliced off, but won't say it outright. This is where I personally run into an issue. If a child can already easily understand the implication that someone swore or lost his hand and perhaps may even be able to guess what swear it was, I don't see what harm there is in acknowledging the fact that the child already understands these things and allowing him to see what he already knows is there. (Unless it's deliberately done to tease or be funny, then it's acceptable.) Personally I think all the censorship issues is a result of culture more than anything else. The US (and most likely the UK too) has a very high culture of stamping "taboo" on the controversial, while many countries in Europe (namely Denmark) have a much lower culture of such. In Japan there is no such thing as censoring profanity at all. (Though there's no true profanity in Japanese just very rude words. This may be why children's shirts saying "Fuck off" exist in Japan, as the world doesn't have the same effect in Japanese as it does in English.) I think this taboo is a very self-feeding problem that can only be solved by learning to break the cycle. Does this mean that we SHOULD include taboo in kid's fiction? Not necessarily. I just think writers shouldn't be afraid to include taboo should the story ever call for it.
In the end, what really separates adult's fiction from children's fiction? Not a whole lot. One may be aimed towards adult and the other towards children, but there's nothing stopping an adult from enjoying children's fiction and very little (besides laws and policies based on ratings; I believe such laws shouldn't exist) stopping a child from enjoying adult's fiction. Who are we to decide who should read what and what should be read by who?
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