"Yes, but I'm Eleven": An Editor's Perspective on Condescension in Children's Literature

In Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (1964), Harriet is sent to see a psychiatrist by her parents. The psychiatrist opens a cupboard chock-full of games and toys and asks Harriet if she wants to play. "Are all those games yours?" Harriet wants to know. The psychiatrist, thinking he can conceal his agenda, turns the question back to Harriet. "Don't you have games at home?" he asks. "Yes," Harriet says, "But I'm eleven" (254).

In her inimitable style, Fitzhugh has lampooned the image of the caring, understanding adult who can really "talk to children." The psychiatrist is an authority figure pretending, by offering the games, not to be any different from a child. He knows children, he can speak to them at their level. But can he? Why does he deny his role and the fact that he has something to teach Harriet? Often in the worst books for children, and sometimes in the most highly praised children's literature, authors and illustrators seem to forget that they are older and more experienced and make believe they don't know any more than the youngest child. They create simplistic, condescending books that pretend to give young readers credit when actually they are "dumbing down" to them.

Unfortunately, the public perception of children's books seems to confirm the idea that, if something is for children, it had better be obvious. At least, that is the conclusion I have drawn from the hundreds of submissions that come into Viking each month. If one-tenth of the material that we receive was published, children's bookstores would be full of titles like Grumpy the Christmas Dog (who saves the Prince of Peace from an attack by a pack of vicious rats and is adopted into the Holy Family) or Hey Kids, Say No to Mr. Drugs. Both of these titles are examples of the anthropomorphism or personification that are often used to "cuten up" books for children—and "cutening up" is a classic way to dumb down.

Besides anthropomorphizing, there are other ways that potential children's authors patronize their audience. One common practice is pretending not to lecture children by disguising information with rhyming

Illustation from Amy the Dancing Bear, copyright © 1987 by Margot Datz; text copyright © 1987 by Carly Simon; reproduced by permission of Doubleday, a Division of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Couplets, made-up words, or alliterative titles (Endy the Endorphin is one I received). Possibly the most common way writers condescend, however, is when they use allegory to write sloppy children's books (an office favorite is Dang-de-Pepper-Dol-Sus: The Little Black Sea Urchin from Hober-Scotch Who Knew the Whole World Was on Fire But Could Not Find a Way to the Flame). In its own way, allegory can sugar coat a story as much as personification or rhyming couplets. Why do so many children's writers attempt this genre? Do they think children are impervious to learning right and wrong in any other form? I don't think so. These writers assume that by telling a story as an allegory they can ignore the discipline that is part and parcel of good writing, overlook rules of logic and plot development and simply pour forth from their hearts.

What a patronizing attitude! But these sloppy allegories are symptomatic of a larger problem: writers for children often forget to respect their audience. Many writers assume that because children are smaller, and their books are smaller, that children are less complex, easier to please—and therefore easier to write for. One group who perpetuates the idea that children's books should pander to the audience are celebrity authors. Carly Simon's first picture book, Amy the Dancing Bear (1987), contains many lapses in plot and is laden with an overuse of cheery adjectives: "How could [her mother] cut short this delight, this artful little creature with her sunny auburn curls and her graceful turns like tropical palms moving in the...