As writer we need to know who we are writing for. Personally I write for children. Many people think children's writing is a watered down version of adult writing, but this is not the case. It's probably more difficult to write for children than to write for adults. Why? Because you not only have to write something that appeals to children, but to their parents. It doesn't matter how much a child wants to read your book, it's going to go nowhere unless the one who holds the cash is willing to part with it. Adults have completely different ideas about what children should read than children do, they look for educational aspects, they censor and they may refuse to buy a book if they feel it encourages bad behavior in their child. There are also those adults who buy gifts for children who want them to read something they would like to have read when they were little, which may be very different to what a child nowadays wants to read. Plus there are libraries to consider, they can be very selective with what they feel children should be reading. With picture books adults will look for something that they can tolerate when they have it requested for the 23rd time that day.
Children on the other hand run a mile if they even sniff a tiny bit of educational material in there. They want to rebel, and to be entertained. They want to escape in the fictional bad behavior of their protagonists to escape the rigid adult controlled world they live in. Learn stuff? Ha, nope. They have some kind of weird anti-didactic radar. You have to sneak it in. Again very difficult to do.
So in children's books there is a dual audience to write for, both the child and the adult. This isn't a case of crossover fiction, which is even more difficult to consciously do. Every children's book has to consider a dual audience if it wants to be published. I'm not saying that you have to consider the adult audience too much, just be aware of it when writing.
Don't underestimate children either. Difficult concepts are good. Children don't like to be patronised, you can simplify but don't avoid things, children are people too. In a project at Uni we gathered 2 groups of school children separately and has a discussion about Anne Fine's 'Up on cloud 9'. This is a book which tackles attempted suicide and depression. The 12 year old group's views on what was happening in the book didn't differ greatly from the 14 year old group, the only difference was that the 12 year old group thought they didn't know what was happening in the book when they actually did.
It's a tricky business this writing for children lark. Wish me luck. Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
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