Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" were for younger readers, though the latter is certainly for adults as well. With the singular and laudable exception of Michael Chabon - whose most recent novel, "Summerland," is what book publishers call a "juvenile" - our ostensibly serious novelists write only for adult readers, leaving the vast market for young people's books to those authors, some of them notably talented, who specialize in it.ĭuring the late 19th and early to middle 20th centuries, by contrast, writers of considerable distinction scarcely thought it beneath themselves to write for children. One of the many lamentable ways in which American literature has changed over the past century or so is that our best writers almost never write for younger readers. An occasional column in which The Post's book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.
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