| From
the March/April 2006 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
Outside the Lines
 hildren
have always managed to sneak outside the lines their caregivers-in-literature
set for them. At first, it’s just a Berenstain Bear book here,
a My Little Pony Sparkle Sticker Kit there. Then it’s miles
and miles of (depending on the spirit of the times) the Hardy Boys,
Oz books, the Baby-sitter’s Club, or Goosebumps, each at best
tolerated and at worst suppressed by the good-book police.
And always, there are comic books, most lately
transmogrified by both respect and higher production values into
graphic novels. But the good-book police are along for the ride
this time, as juvenile publishers begin their own graphic novel
imprints and magazines like the Horn Book seek to catch
up on their aesthetics.
Let’s try not to spoil everything, though.
Kids need their outlaw literature, experience with media that may
shock (or bore) their elders or that may simply be off adult radar
entirely. It’s a wonderful thing to have a literature “for
children” or “for young adults” and to bring young
people to it. But equal to the necessity for nourishing readers
and that literature with each other is the need to allow those readers
outside the garden gates to unearth their own discoveries. Who knows
what they might bring back?
|
