Some things, I think, like fairy books and secret doors, are only meant to be found by children.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The idea that certain things in life - and in the universe - don't yield up their secrets is something that requires a slightly more mature reader to accept.
I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.
Second, there are so many magical places in books that you can't go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go.
You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for - if you are honest - you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.
I understood right from the start that every set of library doors were the sort of magic portals that lead to other lands. My God, right within reach there were dinosaurs and planets and presidents and girl detectives!
While books expand horizons by exposing us to worlds outside our own, children also need to see themselves, their experiences and their cultures reflected in books they read. Unfortunately, for too many children, this is not the norm.
To me in my childhood, elves and fairies of all sorts were very real things, and my dolls were as really children as I was myself a child.
Fairytales were never really meant for children; they were meant as cautionary tales for teenagers on the verge of growing up.
I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.
Children know from a remarkably early age that things are being kept from them, that grown-ups participate in a world of mysteries.