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books». A reviewer of Handles (1983) claimed that Mark «provides for
young people the combination of fine prose and strong realism generally
reserved for adults». 12 Early in his writing career, the Flemish author
Bart Moeyaert consciously chose what one critic terms «adult writing for
children and youth». While books by authors like Moeyaert may sometimes
be less accessible for young readers, they «tap uncharted depths in
children». 13 The same can be said of the Norwegian author Tormod
Haugen and the Danish author Louis Jensen, whose novels are characterized
by their literary quality and complex narrative techniques. Aidan
Chambers’s Carnegie Medal-winning novel Postcards from No Man’s Land
(1999), which was recommended for sophisticated teenage readers and
adults, indicates the extent to which the «literary novel» had gained a
foothold in young adult fiction by the end of the 1990s. Like many other
young adult novels, Postcards from No Man’s Land could have been published
for the adult market. It is unlikely that novels such as Chamber’s
This Is All: The pillow book of Cordelia Kenn and M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing
Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, which were both published in
2006, would have appeared as young adult novels only a few years earlier.
Jonathan Hunt argues that «young adult literature has matured into something
virtually indistinguishable from the best adult literary fiction». 14 An
increasing number of books being published as young adult titles could
just as easily be published for adults, and vice-versa. 15
While young readers do not have to understand everything in a text
(adult readers don’t necessarily either), many critics feel that today’s
young readers generally have more literary competence than their predecessors.
Children of the twenty-first century are savvy consumers
exposed to the same cultural and marketing influences as adults.
Children’s authors realize that they have a demanding and discerning
audience. Convinced that preteen readers are the most difficult audience
of all, Carl Hiaasen asked for an escape clause in his two-book contract
with Knopf so he could bail if Hoot (2002), his début novel for young readers,
was a failure.
Many crossover novels contain thought-provoking concepts that engage
the reader – adult or child – on an intellectual as well as an emotional
level, often raising questions that remain unanswered. Jane Nissen, a former
children’s editor at Penguin, contends that «Philip Pullman’s trilogy
heralded the rise of quality fiction and led the way for Harry Potter.» 16
Many critics feel that His Dark Materials can better lay claim to the
crossover label than Harry Potter due to the complexity of a work that the
author describes as «Paradise Lost for teenagers». A number of American
critics feel that Pullman writes more for adults because his challenging
books require some knowledge of religion, metaphysics, physics, psychology,
politics, and previous literary works. However, other critics rightly
point out that «adults read J.K. Rowling because she is not complicated;
children read Philip Pullman because he is». 17 As we have seen, Pullman
was not the first author to write children’s fiction of high literary quality
that appealed to adults. A few years before Pullman, Jostein Gaarder
also accomplished the rare achievement of gaining both commercial success
and the approbation of the literary establishment with a children’s
book, namely Sophie’s World, published in 1991. Gaarder’s books for children
and young adults are sophisticated, ingeniously contrived, and multilayered.
All of his novels, whether published for an adult or a juvenile
audience, deal with profound metaphysical questions which are of interest
to young and old alike.
The darkness in children’s books, which took many adults by surprise
when the crossover vogue brought them under closer scrutiny, is certainly
not a new phenomenon. Violence and death figure prominently in
many children’s classics, including the fairy tales of Perrault and the
Brothers Grimm, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. Dark themes were
largely discouraged in children’s literature throughout much of the
twentieth century, however. Robert Cormier’s first young adult novel was
rejected by numerous publishers for its pessimistic ending, although his
subsequent works continued to describe the dark underside of adolescence.
Since his first novel, Janne, Min Vän (Johnny My Friend), published in
1985, the Swedish author Peter Pohl has consistently dealt with difficult
themes in works that rarely have a happy ending. Today children’s
authors often present a much more pessimistic view of the world. In writing
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon claims that
he wanted to get rid of the «little invisible ring of safety» that characterizes
children’s fiction and to say to the reader: «This is the real world, bad
things might happen.» 18 Since the outset of his career, Tormod Haugen has
never hesitated to use discomforting themes, because he wants to depict life
as it really is, rather than the way adults want children to believe it is.
According to Bart Moeyaert, many adults object to novels of this kind and
feel that «you can’t give children a dark corridor with no bright end in
sight». 19 Jan Mark often portrayed a dark, bleak view of the world, especially
in her science fiction novels for older readers, for example, The Eclipse of the
Century (1999), Useful Idiots (2004), and Riding Tycho (2005). In Daniel Handler’s
A Series of Unfortunate Events, the innocent, young Baudelaire orphans unjustly
undergo an inordinate amount of sorrow, despair, pain, and suffering,
far exceeding that of any Dickens orphan. The author believes that «most
children’s books aren’t nearly dark enough, given the randomness and
chaos of the real world». 20 Many writers are of the opinion that it is essential
to present children with the truth even when it is dark and painful, and
many people would argue that today’s darker children’s fiction merely
reflects the darker world in which young people now live. 21
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