Danny ChaiI have a lot of respect for good children’s writers. Anyone that can really understand the mind of child, that’s amazing to me. Like, I mentioned how I reread that book I was into as a kid. I dunno, it’s amazing to me. Just, from my perspective now, I’d think the language is too advanced, but obviously I’m wrong. Making the language simple enough for a child to read but not speaking down to them, I dunno, that’s amazing to me.
Like when I was a kid, I never really respected those children’s authors that adults thought were good, as opposed to kids. My prime example is Madeleine L’Engle. I think she’s Christian, so maybe this is bad, but yeah, that book she wrote, A Wrinkle In Time, won the Newberry award but I’m sorry, I found it boring to tears and confusing to boot. I dunno if you remember this but the main character defeats the evil enemy by loving it. That makes no sense to a kid. Actually, it still makes no sense to me. If you’re loving it to destroy it, how is that love? I dunno, I hated the book as a kid. Again, one of those children’s books that adults thought were good, not kids. I dunno, my opinion.
So yeah, I didn’t really respect books like that because they didn’t understand the mind of a child. I had more respect for like the author of Encyclopedia Brown. Yeah, nothing deep or whatever, but that guy knew how to capture a child’s interest. And that’s more impressive to me than writing a supposedly great book that kids don’t really like.