Children on Center Stage

Blogger:   Etta Wilson

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather:  Hot

Down at my second home, aka the nearest bookstore, I was looking for a few books I’d seen recommended recently. They were books for adults but with children in major roles. I’m always fascinated by how authors treat children in books for adults, and I think their number is increasing. I’ve previously mentioned Homer Hickam’s Rocket Boys and Tony Earley’s Jim the Boy, but there’s a new batch on the shelves.

Prolific bestselling author Jodi Picoult’s new book House Rules was released in March. It features a mother struggling with her son’s Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Unfortunately the incidence of Asperger’s is increasing. Even so,  not every author of Picoult’s stature would choose to create a novel about such a subject.

Mystery writer John Hart’s newest book is The Last Child, also published in March. I haven’t read this one, but the reviews frighten me a bit. In fact, I have trouble reading or seeing any story in which children are victims or stranded without help.

Last November Liza Campbell’s A Charmed Life: Growing Up in MacBeth’s Castle was published. Campbell spent part of her childhood in the famous castle, and she writes about it well along with allusions to the Macbeth of Shakespeare vintage. Most of all, I loved this because it reminded me of a client’s manuscript about an American family that wound up staying in a strange castle.

Have I mentioned The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery in an earlier blog? It was published in French in 2006 and in English in 2008. I’m in the middle of it now. The interplay between Renee the concierge and Paloma the 12-year-old is both funny and heartbreaking with lots of sidelights and a strong French flavor.

It requires a certain level of skill–or some very vivid memory of how children act and talk as they develop–to create a child character in an adult novel. They can easily take center stage, and then you have a children’s book with adult characters.

What books have you read that included children characters who were portrayed well? (No fair listing To Kill a Mockingbird.)

By Etta Wilson on Aug 25, 2010 in Blog, Fiction, Reading | 7 Comments