Adults in kid books

[thanate]

I just finished rereading Diana Wynne Jones's Enchanted Glass, and continue to be a little bit "Wow, how did she get away with that?" about a couple things. It's a kid's book, with two POV protagonists, and the first one we meet is 30. The 12-year-old doesn't even get introduced for a few chapters

Comments

[vcmw]

I think you pegged the main reasons: marketing categories and assumed kid disinterest both. I'd be really surprised, due to marketing and expectations, if you found much that was published since the late 1990s in middle grade that has significant adult viewpoint characters.

I think it's super hard to get away with now with the categories functioning the way they do. It was maybe a bit easier to come across in the 1970s-1980s and before? Especially, my sense is, in historicals and fantasy.

My only mental go-to example from non-DWJ territory is Patricia McKillip's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which despite (elliptically handled) very adult themes and adult main characters was middle-grade marketed in at least some early editions, I think. But it came out before there was a broad YA category. I think if it were reprinted now, it would be reprinted as YA. When it was reprinted in the 1990s I think it was from Magic Carpet, the Jane Yolen edited imprint that was sort of between older middle grade and YA?