Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives, and: The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership (review)

Both of these two new studies on the phenomenon of so-called “crossover” fiction open with discussions of Harry Potter, something that should surprise almost no one. If there is any series that has, rightly or wrongly, been credited with seismic shifts in how children’s books get marketed and who exactly reads them it is certainly the Harry Potter books. Beckett notes how Rowling’s first novel is often thought of as “the crossover title, a kind of prototype of the genre” (1, emphasis in original). Falconer recalls first encountering it when her sister handed her a “paperback she had picked up in an airport shop on her way to India . . . a gloomy-looking book, with a black and white photo of a steam train approaching through fog on the cover” (1). From this simple book there quickly followed, she recalls, “an extraordinary period in which children’s literature exploded into the mainstream of popular and literary culture. Suddenly everyone was talking about children’s books, and not just Harry Potter, not just fantasy, but children’s fiction in all its variety and invention” (1). For Both Beckett and Falconer, the Harry Potter books represent the most recognizable example of the current crossover phenomenon: books read by both child and adult audiences; books consciously targeted to multiple demographics; authors who turn from writing adult fiction to writing children’s novels, or vice versa. As Beckett simply describes it, “Crossover fiction blurs the borderline between two traditionally separate readerships: children and adults” (3), something the Harry Potter books accomplished in seemingly unprecedented ways. If there is any single thing that connects both Beckett and Falconer’s books, however, it is that there are precedents for Harry Potter, that there is in fact a deeper history and broader perspective to this phenomenon than often gets acknowledged. Whereas Beckett attempts to place this phenomenon not only in a historical but also a global context, Falconer sets out to consider some of the more cultural and theoretical causes behind it. In that sense alone these two books complement each other especially well and are well worth recommending to anyone interested in the topic.

Beckett organizes her book around the broad categories that make up different types of crossover fiction and proceeds to work through as many examples as she can. There are lengthy chapters on so-called Adult-to-Child fiction (adult novels that are read by children and adolescents, including such standards as Gulliver’s Travels, A Christmas Carol, or The Time Machine), and Child-to-Adult fiction (children’s books read avidly by adults, including Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, or books with cult followings such as Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, or C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books). The most significant strength of Beckett’s book, however, is her scope. Beckett devotes significant portions of her book to authors and titles from a global perspective, including authors (both well known and lesser known) from Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, India, South Africa, Australia, Poland, the Netherlands, and the Ukraine, to name just a few. As a resource for titles, authors, and publishers, the book seems invaluable. Beckett notes, to take but one example, the publishing imprint Las Tres Edades from the Spanish publishing house Siruela, dedicated to the idea that “age boundaries are very artificial, and that certain texts are suitable for everyone” (197), and which publishes books aimed at simultaneous audiences of children and adults. In her opening, Beckett writes that “Crossover literature is generally seen as a new trend” (1), an idea she sets out to discredit by the sheer weight of examples to the contrary. She points out that crossover fiction was a vibrant phenomenon of the nineteenth century, in particular, and in earlier centuries if we consider books such as...