I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for children’s lit. Obviously, when I was a child, that was all I read. I felt rather guilty about doing this around middle and high school, due to the fact that I was “no longer a child.” I was obsessed with the idea of “reading at my level,” because as a third grader, I was told that my reading level was very high. Naturally, this fueled my ego, and I became one of those “burnt out at twenty” types who didn’t have the attention span to read a single two-hundred page novel in a sitting. I have since learned to fall back in love with reading, but even when I “wasn’t reading,” I could still make it through a children’s book.
Now, when I say children’s lit, I don’t mean the picture books we read at bedtime as kids. (Though I will always have a special place in my heart for “Froggy Goes To Bed.”) I mean things like fairytales and the books we all devoured in middle school—the Percy Jackson books, Harry Potter stories, Lord of the Rings, Anne of Green Gables, and those other random books we were all assigned during those grades and somehow still remember. Most people think on these books with the fondness that only nostalgia can bring. There are people who outgrow children’s literature—those are the people who will give their childhood books to their children but not open the stories themselves. I am not one of those people. And I’m gonna tell you why.
One of my favorite things about children’s literature—and stories in general—is that they are simple. Our own lives are messy, and they are difficult to understand as we live them. Stories organize events to form a cohesive whole; as Aristotle would say, a plot is following one action from beginning to end. Each story is like a microcosm of the world, but without extraneous details that tend to complicate it. Adult literature often explores the world of adults, dealing with more nuance and, shall we say, PG-13 themes. This is not to say that children’s literature can’t have a complex plot, or that children can’t understand those “PG-13” themes, or even that those themes shouldn’t be there. Children’s literature just distills those themes into a manageable bite-size pieces. For example, children’s literature is what first teaches children about the existence of dragons, which is a PG-13 theme if I’ve ever seen one.
There is a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton that goes like this: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.” Not every story has an actual dragon, of course. Harry Potter’s “dragon” is Voldemort, Frodo’s is Sauron, and so on and so forth. I must say, I have to disagree with Mr. Chesterton here. Most loving parents don’t want to show their children dragons, and so shelter them as long as possible. As a consequence, a lot of these children don’t meet a dragon until a bit later in life, or at least not until after they’ve been introduced to their first fairytale. Chesterton got it only half wrong: fairytales, in fact, do teach children that dragons exist, and that those dragons have dangerous claws and teeth, and if you get too close or don’t pay attention, the dragon can and will strike. Fairytales introduce evil in that manageable bite-size nugget.
But the second half of Chesterton’s quote is spot-on: fairytales teach that dragons can be beaten, and they show a range of different ways to beat them, because not every dragon is defeated the same way. Some dragons, like Sauron, are defeated with two little half-dead hobbits, others, like Voldemort, are defeated in a very public battle and a simple spell. Most of the time, the fact that the dragon is defeated isn’t nearly as important as how the dragon is defeated. Children’s books show that defeating the dragon rarely comes from pure luck (that’s just lazy writing), but requires a certain amount of skill (which means that you’re going to have to learn something). They also show perhaps the most important part of all to defeating a dragon: bravery.
Bravery is a running theme throughout almost all of children’s literature. Real children often feel small, not least because everyone else in the world is so much larger than they are, and those larger people certainly do seem to make a mess of things. In stories, children feel the exact same way, which makes those characters relatable not only to children, but to adults as well. (Don’t pretend like you’ve never felt that the world was entirely too large and that you were entirely too small.) Merely existing as a child takes a certain amount of bravery, but to exist as a child in a novel would be a great feat given the dangerous mission that likely lies ahead in every adventure story. These children are usually terrified, but they face their dragon anyway. Somehow, they find the resolve to carry out the duty no one else wanted, because they understand that if they don’t, more horrible things could happen. In fact, most of the children in storybooks are cheerful in the face of adversity, or at least they do their best, and that is perhaps the bravest thing of all.
As an adult, I am continually impressed with these literary children. I understand that not only are they being braver than I ever could be, (I would most definitely abandon the wizarding world to its fate rather than face Voldemort) but they are dealing with these grandiose scenarios on top of the ever-so-difficult process of growing up. It’s no small feat to grow up. Growing up means you start to understand the world and your place in it; you start to understand why and how society is structured the way it is, and it comes with an appreciation (and a certain cynicism) of that structure. To do that is not a small accomplishment. I think this is the key as to why I like children’s literature so much: I believe that no one ever truly grows up. I don’t mean in the idealistic Peter Pan sense, in which some adults deliberately choose not to become more mature as they grow older. And I don’t even mean in the “every adult as a child in them” sense either. I mean that I think that everyone is in a state of becoming, and that people try to be a better version of themselves every single day. Children understand this concept very well, because they continually reference the future—“when I grow up.” They want to become a great person. Adults usually lose this sense because they are grown up.
Children’s literature helps me, at least, to remember that I am not fully grown up, and I never will be. I relate to Anne of Green Gables for her awkwardness and her ability to speak out of turn, and I especially relate to her remorse when she does the wrong thing. Learning how to deal with people is part of maturing. I relate to Harry when he feels like everything crashes in on him at once, and he doesn’t want the responsibility of saving the wizarding world. Shouldering one’s duty the way he does is part of becoming an adult. My problems won’t always look like theirs, and I think that’s part of growing up, too. The problems in children’s literature will forever serve as reminders: I’m not complete. I’m still working to become the “grown up” version of me.
If you think you have fully grown up, perhaps you should open one of those old dusty children’s books. Maybe you won’t feel as grown up as you think.