Seems like once or twice a season, we'd get a book in at the shop that was exquisitely written, yet didn't stand a chance with kids. (Every now and then, one of those books wins the Newbery, but that's another can of worms.) And any time a debate arose about whether such a book should have been marketed for children or adults in the first place, the term "Adult Sensibility" usually came up. All of us bookstore broads knew exactly what a story with an adult sensibility felt like, but God help us if anyone wanted an actual definition. It's still not something I can define concisely; nevertheless, I'm going to try to at least explain.
Imagine an event from your childhood that makes for an interesting story or anecdote. Now imagine the different ways you might tell your story if you were:
1. A child telling another child
2. A child telling a teen
3. A child telling an adult
4. A teen telling a child
5. A teen telling another teen
6. A teen telling an adult
7. An adult telling a child
8. An adult telling a teen
9. An adult telling another adult
Which parts of your story would you accentuate, and which parts would you gloss over, depending on who you are and to whom you're speaking? How might elements like length, structure, vocabulary, tone, style, and focus change depending on your audience?
Of course everyone wants to say that stories for kids tend to be simpler (or worse yet, "easier") than stories for adults, but that's not quite right. Most people who care about children's literature know that if you're telling stories for kids, it isn't enough to start with "once upon a time" and use a lot of short words until you come to the "happily ever after." This isn't about dumbing down -- it's about relevance and appeal. It's about respecting you audience's tastes.
The story might also change depending on the teller's distance from the event. Children or teenagers relating something that happened in recent memory might load the story with vivid sensory details still fresh in their mind. On the other hand, adults have greater opportunity to be more reflective about how an event fits into the greater context of life.
An example:
Last Christmas my uncle converted some old home videos onto DVD as family gifts. One of them is of the Christmas Eve when I was in second grade, a holiday I remember quite well. But watching that video now, 20 years later, fascinates me endlessly.
There are so many things I can see now that I didn't pick up on then. The rather extravagant way my uncle humored me when I presented him with a duck-shaped lint brush I'd picked out ALL BY MYSELF. The way our mothers and grandmother giggled over the occasional spicy remark that sailed right over our precious little heads. And there were deeper things, too: hints of the tension that would eventually break my aunt and uncle's marriage. The way my great-great aunt watched my cousins and I open our gifts -- my great-great aunt who I'd much later learn had given up her only children, a set of illegitimate twins, for adoption some sixty years ago. That's the sort of perspective that constitutes an adult sensibility.
Because to a seven-year-old, this is the story of The Year I Wore My Long Pink Dress and Heather and I Got Television Sets for Christmas! My memories aren't all superficial, though. As a kid, I noticed that despite the occasional blaze of mischief old Aunt Grace was usually so quiet; I didn't know the word wistful" then, but I think perhaps that's what I was seeing. I also picked up on the atmosphere between my aunt and uncle, and felt a keen, silent mix of thankfulness and guilt that my household had smoother edges than my cousins'. I heard the grown-up ladies laughing and momentarily wondered why. I may not have dwelled on these moments at the time, but they lodged in my memory even if I didn't understand their significance just then.
Even so, I would have told that story differently then than I'd tell it now. Not only my voice, but my perspective and focus were different. No matter how inquisitive and observant, a seven-year-old kid telling about that Christmas Eve isn't going to expound on signs of past and future family intrigue. A kid wants to get to the presents already, and a writer who focuses for any significant length of time on anything but the loot sacrifices the authenticity of a child's perspective. In a novel for adults you can get away with that, while in a kids' story you risk losing touch with your audience.
Why? Because no matter how old you are, it's almost impossible to simultaneously experience and process your emotions. Adults, by simple virtue of their age and exposure to life, have the luxury of being able to stand at a distance and consider their childhood, while kids are mostly just trying to survive each moment as it hits.
But here's the catch: when you're an adult writing for children, you can begin to narrow the gap between the two perspectives. If you've got a delicate hand, you can take those persistent hints and nuances and give kids a leg up on what they mean, and why they make us feel the way they do. Watching a character wade through these incidents and emotions gives kids some tools to recognize and navigate the undercurrents in their own lives.
Here's the point I've been circling: Point-of-view and Perspective are not synonymous. Point-of-view is about whose eyes you're looking through. Perspective is about taking those sights and making sense of them via the brain and the experiences behind the eyes that saw them. And that difference means you can write a picture book about an elderly woman that a six-year-old will enjoy, or a novel narrated by a six-year-old that appeals to adults. Which is why books like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Secret Life of Bees -- books told from a child's point-of-view with an adult perspective -- are stories about kids, not for kids. Oddly enough, even the best children's authors aren't immune to writing with adult perspective from time to time. However, this is the part where I resist naming certain children's books I believe are really novels about children, because every example I can think of is by a living, lauded author I'd rather not risk irritating. Suffice it to say that one of them is among my own top five favorite books.
