Books for adults are so boring.

Children’s literature is so much more creative and interesting. Whimsical, if you like.

I work in a public library, so I spend a lot of time around books, and something I’ve noticed is the hegemony and longevity of certain trends, both in children’s and adult literature. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with the publishing industry printing what they know will be lucrative, so you get a lot of boring knock-offs in both the adult and children’s sections.

For example, one current trend in adult novels that simply refuses to die is Gone Girl readalikes. I’m not saying that every author of every mystery with an unreliable narrator and either the word “girl” or “woman” or “wife” in the title is trying to trick you into thinking, “Hey, this looks and sounds like Gone Girl, I liked Gone Girl, it was fun. I’ll probably enjoy this book. I should buy it.” But I am saying that publishing houses are probably using those kinds of marketing strategies because they work and they will continue to use them until they stop making them money. (Although, of course, I should say that I know next to nothing about the publishing industry, this is all based on my own personal observation, so is purely anecdotal).

This definitely happens in children’s literature, too. I can’t tell you how many Diary of a Wimpy Kid wannabes I see on a daily basis. I’ve even seen this practice used retroactively, to make a book published prior to this over saturation appear more appealing to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid demographic. The book in question being Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Granted, Alexie’s novel was published several months after the first installment of Jeff Kinney’s series and I don’t know definitively whether or not there was any influence between them. Both feature cartoons and are written as a diary of the difficulties of the young male protagonist’s life, but they’re very different books, written for different audiences. Kinney’s book is light and breezy and fun and intended for a pretty young audience (7+, apparently). Alexie’s novel, however, deals with far more mature themes and often harrowing struggles (it’s semi-autobiographical and details what it’s like to be a young Native person in a hostile white world) and is intended for young adults. And yet, they’re being marketed in the same way? Is the hope for kids who grew up reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid to graduate to Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian or is it to trick young kids into picking it up because it looks similar? Or, alternatively, both, as that would probably net the most capital, especially considering the tendency for Alexie’s novel to be banned due to its more mature content?

Anyway, the point is that this kind of thing happens in children’s, young adult, and adult literature, but in children’s literature (and maybe YA, too) it seems to be less of a problem because for every knock-off that gets published there is also a fascinating, fantastical and beautiful story that gets published.

Part of this is comes down to personal preference. I like whimsy in my storytelling. Two of the adult authors whose writing I admire most, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Salman Rushdie, employ magical realism, lending their novels a fantastical bent even if the actual plot is more mundane. To oversimplify, why would I want to read a book about a lonely divorcée trying to find romance when I could be reading a book about a blind boy and his talking spider companion outwitting an ancient witch hellbent on stealing children’s eyes in an enchanted forest? Adult fantasy rarely features any of that kind of creativity. In my experience most, though not all, falls into a few categories: A Song of Ice and Fire type fantasy (which I personally find enjoyable and is inventive and sometimes literary but is also usually pretty firmly grounded, not whimsical, and doesn’t tell a contained story but is a years-long investment that reads more like The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), the traditional, D&D type fantasy, with stalwart heroes on a quest against evil, and urban fantasy, which I find is often a vehicle for an author to write about their favorite imaginary creature being sexy and brooding in clubs (not that there’s anything wrong with that, or that those books can’t have interesting and nuanced themes, just that they’re not my cup of tea). While each of these categories is, I’m sure, valuable in its own way, the reason these kinds of books get published is because they’re the sure-things, the types of books that have an established readership and will definitely make money. So they often tend to be derivative. ASOIAF is popular? Good, so we’ll only publish historically rooted, sweeping, multi-volume fantasy works instead of taking a chance on something more experimental. And all I’m saying is that in children’s literature, those kinds of experimental stories seem to get published way more often.

I know that the obvious solution to this problem is just to read children’s literature and to stop complaining about whatever nonsense it is that I’m complaining about. But here’s the thing: I’ve tried that. However, as this post is already becoming tediously long, I think I’ll save my foray into the world of children’s literature for next time, when I will, hopefully, use a book I’m currently reading as something of a case study and compare it with other children’s media I thoroughly enjoy.