Adults are boring - So is it true that children's stories should only ever feature animals and kids as key characters? A ReadItTorial

Well, there's nothing like being served a fresh taste of "WAKE UP!" when it comes to a particular insight into children's books and the latest subject for a ReadItTorial is a fairly divisive notion that children's books (particularly picture books) and stories should only ever feature children or animals.

Wait, stop the durned press a second, WHAT?

Yes indeed - apparently there is a very strong opinion amongst authors and would-be authors that one of the main reasons I've gone horribly wrong with manuscript submissions in the past may be down to one simple error on my part.

Including an adult as a main character in a children's story (with no child characters or animals, not even in supporting roles) is, apparently, a real 'no no' in some circles. You see, as plain as the nose on your face, the fact of the matter (as the stylishly shirted gentleman above demonstrates)...adults are BORING!

I always have an eye on the written and unwritten 'rules' for children's books and this particular one felt like a real whump in the gut. In discussion with several awesome tweeters (including amongst others the truly awesome O'Hara sisters, Jodie Hodges, Sara O'Leary, Duncan Beedie, Sandra Russell and fab PR Patronus Sarah Elizabeth) there seemed to be a real split right down the middle about this one.

So we dug deep into the archives, desperate to see if we'd been falling into the same trap with our Book of the Week picks, compiling some stats from 2017's 721 books that were reviewed on the blog but specifically concentrating our efforts on Picture Book of the Week winners. Did any of them feature adults (human adults, not adults portrayed as anthropomorphised animals)? Any at all?

Eeks. It didn't look good.

A mere 9 out of 76 children's picture books that made the Book of the Week slot featured human adults in a solo role (or featured in books with inconsequential or NPC child characters). Picture Book Stories such as "The Gritterman" by Orlando Weeks were, it seems, extremely rare.

The interesting thing was that of the 9, 7 featured adult male characters rather than adult female characters. Something I was not expecting to see at all.

The other extremely interesting thing was that over half of these types of book were comics or graphic novels, again seeming to show that "boring old adults" are fine as long as they have super-powers or a good solid comic-strip punch-up now and again.

Things seem to change radically when books start to move towards upper-middle-grade and into YA (though weirdly, age differences do a weird seesaw thing between MG and YA with more adults featuring in MG, ages dropping more or less exclusively to teen or younger end of 20s in the YA spectrum).

One other odd thing is that it seems children are perfectly fine reading non-fiction featuring adults (though by no stretch of the imagination can you call historical figures, famous STEM figures, pioneering explorers etc 'boring') so there seems to be a key there.

Children, it seems, are fine with main adult characters as long as they're doing something pretty mind-blowingly great. So all is not lost.

Thinking back to stories we've read where (for instance) a human adult character has interactions with non-human characters (either in sci fi or fantasy scenarios, or again interactions with anthropomorphised animal characters or indeed kids either as a parent or guardian or relative) it's easy to see something raised perfectly by the O'Hara Sisters in their tweets on this subject:

I don’t think it needs to be children exactly, but even when it’s adults, they often present as children (Winnie the Pooh, Asterix is a big kid, Paddington presents as a child etcetc) I think the issue is mostly when it’s adults...

‘Solve the issues’. You know those children’s books that are like ‘mummy came in and solved everything’. Very boring for children I think?

— O'Hara Sisters (@oharasisters) January 26, 2018

This is a story mechanic we see an awful lot in kid / parent books, it's also one we see in any books where there's a moral lesson to impart (and sometimes those stories can be such a massive, preachy annoyance for kids anyway).

The main reason I'm taking such a deep dive on this is because I've had quite a few manuscripts rejected and it becomes searingly obvious that sometimes the characters and the settings are the problem - and if I am stupid enough to include characters in a story that have issues I have (thinking of one solid example that was inspired by a real issue we always struggle with at home) without chopping up and changing the main character enough for it to 'not be me', these are never going to find the right audience or get anywhere near a whiff of a deal.

So it also becomes blatantly obvious why there are so many animal / monster books, as the easy 'swap in' is to remove the human element entirely.

Lots of food for thought. I would really, dearly love to hear anyone talk up a favourite 'adult human as main character' book as a great example so if you have one, it'd be ace to have a few comments below or on Twitter @readitdaddy

Wow though eh? Kid's books, who'd have thunk they were a rich ever-complicated constantly shifting and amazingly inspirational thing eh?