
Once a body grows old enough, we are all saddened by the thought of a breakup. Good Children's literature is some of the most difficult literature to write because one must challenge, engage, please, and awe a mind without resorting to archetypes or life experience. It has been my policy that the best literature for children is not a trifling thing, not a simplification of the adult or a sillier take on the world.

Children are first protected from their culture-kept remote and safe-and then they are thrust incongruously into a world that they have been told is unsafe and unsavory and we expected them not to blanch. I think that the failure not only of Children's Literature as a whole, but of our very concept of children and the child's mind is that we think it a crime to challenge and confront that mind.
