Books for All Ages
The second Harry Potter book had this blurb: “I’ve yet to find a child who can put it down. Magic stuff.” Considering how popular the series became with adults and kids, and made JK Rowling the first billionaire author in history, it’s easy to laugh at that blurb. Only kids can’t put it down? Does magic appeal only to kids? Really? Benefit of hindsight aside, it made me realize that Maurice Sendak was right on how books get (mis)categorized: “I don’t write for children. I write — and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’” JRR Tolkien went a step further and questioned whether even fairy tales are only for children, not adults : “In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: “this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty.” But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that began thus: “this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy”...