This slender reed

Friends tell me that I enjoy writing for the young because I'm childish. The statement is true, but what little success the books have enjoyed has not been because of this personal defect, but in spite of it. Books for children should not be childish because they are not directed to childish readers. The word "childish" applied to adults has not kept up with their years. I am satisfied with the letters I get from young readers that they are doing very well on that score. It is a grave literary crime to feed children books written in baby-talk and oozing with false sweetness-and-light. Children like their history straight and their fiction believable and thoughtful. The many letters I get from them tell me that on this point the younger generation and this childish grown-up see eye to eye.