Tuesday, April 20, 2010

There is constant squabble

From Aidan Chambers' Booktalk: Occasional Writing on Literature and Children.
There is constant squabble about whether particular books are children's books or not. Indeed, some people argue that there is no such thing as books for children but only books which children happen to read. And unless one wants to be partisan and dogmatic - which I do not, having had my fill of both - one has to agree that there is some truth on both sides and the whole truth in neither.

The fact is that some books are clearly written for children in a specific sense - they were written by their authors deliberately for children - and some books, never specifically intended for children, have qualities which attract children to them.

No comments:

Post a Comment