The Work of Childhood

Creating work for children is a service industry, and those of us who do this work have a sacred calling. It's time to recalibrate our approach.

One of my illustrations from my forthcoming picture book The Greatest, written by Newbery Honoree Veera Hiranandani. Click here to order it!

When I’m painting or writing, I’m also quite aware that the work I’m creating, and the ideas inherent in the work, are for people—yes, I’m teasing out ideas for myself (since writing is the primary way any of us come to know what we think), but it’s also important to me to be a tiny force for good in the world if I can get myself together enough to do so.

You know, when you’re growing up, you don’t always know what you’re absorbing from your family of origin. Mine was such a white-knuckled experience that I had no time to think about the positive things that I was actually learning, and yes, they were there. One of the most important ethics I gained in my Jewish upbringing was the concept of tikkun olam, or healing the brokenness of the world. It was impressed upon me that this was my job, my duty, as a human being, but especially as part of the Jewish community. Once I actually became cognizant that I had a part to play in this, I made it the central ethos of everything I did, from my work as an illustrator and musician, to my marriage and parenting.

I labored in obscurity in my illustration career for 15 years before my “big break”—my first contract with a major publishing house. When I finally entered that world, it was, unexpectedly, into the world of Young Adult novels, and not the picture books I had been pursuing for so long. I had been illustrating mainly for word-of-mouth clients, so I had no interaction with publishing culture beyond my yearning for it. But what a shock: I entered YA lit just at the ramp-up of cancel culture. I watched artists apologize to mobs. I watched them capitulate to slanderous randos. I watched them say things I knew they knew weren’t true just to keep their reputations intact. I even watched a number of them pull their own books, a huge financial sacrifice, especially for a debut author who’s worked so hard just to get their first book deal.

Because YA was never my aim, I simply hadn’t read the corpus of popular books, so I didn’t realize what the subculture had become. Don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderful, worthy books written for teens. Some of them are real works of art; many of them explore truly relevant themes of coming of age, moral choice, personal agency, historical context. But honestly, many of them fall into two categories: straight propaganda, or author therapy.

I’ve heard authors say—privately at first, but now some have even expressed this publicly, without shame—that they literally consider it their job as authors to subvert parents. They believe parents are the enemy, and that they are offering kids a “safe space” to explore themes their parents wouldn’t approve of. Let me be clear, even as someone who experienced abuse in my home growing up: there is a difference between offering a child in crisis a message of hope and pointing them toward resources, and telling kids—especially ones you don’t know—that their parents are their enemies because they don’t agree with their kids’ choices, and that they should therefore live a secret life. Any adult who seeks to put a wedge between parent and child is not a good adult.

If you suspected this was true of some authors, you’re not wrong. Many writers and illustrators of kidlit, from board books through YA, not only don’t have kids, they don’t particularly like kids. Artists are an interesting bunch, you know. A lot of us come from difficult childhoods, but that’s not a prerequisite. Being an artist means perceiving the world a bit differently, and this often puts us at odds with the people around us. It’s kind of part of the gig. Just being an artist working out your place in the world can alienate one from one’s own childhood. I think this is why some artists feel threatened by children: because they are afraid of the world, of discovery, of hopeful possibility. It’s easier to be angsty and dissatisfied, and it fits the image better.

Combine that with the toxic message that to be a successful artist means to forego having a family at all—to suppress the natural desire many, especially women, feel—and some artists will set up a concrete wall between themselves and children. When they are then enticed by the desire to make children’s content (either because of the aesthetics or the opportunity to create a large body of work, or to work out their own latent teen angst through writing) it’s not coming from a place of care for the child, but from a narcissistic energy that is actually harmful to kids. And when this kind of work meets an acquisitions team hungry to produce politically correct or edgy content that “pushes boundaries” and attracts the attention of awards committees, then you have trouble.

I believe it’s high time to acknowledge this dynamic. I also believe that it is high time for those of us who work in children’s literature to acknowledge this very uncomfortable fact: There is no credentialing system for creators of children’s content. None of us have to do a lick of research into child development. I personally do, but frankly, I’m not aware of many others who do this important research and incorporate it into their work. I have several great, conscientious friends and peers (writers, illustrators and publishing professionals)—both those with children and those without—but I could count on one hand the number of artists I know who know anything about child development. This is, to use a Yiddish work, a shanda. A disgrace.

We, as creators of children’s literature, TV shows, movies and the like, should be the experts in this regard. We should be the first to be decrying media that harms children’s growing psyches in any way. And we should be creating art for children that extends, rather than aborts, their innocent engagement with the world, the important work of the childhood-dreaming, where they try out many possibilities of navigating this crazy world, and commit to none of them until they have settled into the goodness of their bodies, minds and spirits.

Woe to any creator who pits kids against their parents; who interrupts a child’s innocence; who wakes a sleeping child. Woe to those who seek to stir up anger in a child; to awaken sexual awareness before they’re ready (especially before puberty); who think the work of childhood is to become mini-activists.

I’ve written whole books on the harm that political youth movements do, not just to the kids involved, but to the society as a whole. In the dedication to my novel Berliners, I say this:

“The young, in every age, are the first to pay for the folly of their elders.”

There is no excuse—none—for adults to use children to perpetuate a political movement. Children naturally want to please the adults around them, and they pick up very quickly on what they believe will gain adult approval, and act it out, regardless of whether they believe it or know the facts behind it.

THIS SHOULD MAKE US TREMBLE.

Exhibit A of this is the explosion of campus protest on behalf of the Hamas Industrial Complex. The young people in this movement have not been educated; rather, like the Hitler Youth, the Free German Youth, and many other political youth movements, they have been indoctrinated. Those leading these movements (which, we have clearly seen by now, are not grassroots or youth-led) are taking advantage of students’ natural developmental stage of individuation to lead them into a violent and hateful ideology that only leads to terrible events. Look up the role of students in the terror events of the ‘70s and ‘80s (hijackings, intifada, mass shootings). We are there. This is that.

I’ve said this before, and I will say it forever: The work of childhood is not to acquire “right beliefs”. The work of childhood is to dream. Artists have a responsibility, but really, a privilege, to facilitate that dream.

So what can we do?

If you are a parent, especially if you’re a working parent, it is impossible to screen your kids’ reading once they’re past early chapter readers. My daughter, for example, is a voracious reader, and thankfully we have always had a very communicative relationship; she felt comfortable telling me that certain books were too intense for her, and when she reached the stage of gluttonous reading, she turned to the classics to satisfy her desire for good, solid storytelling, beautiful, stimulating language, and the depth that met her penchant for re-reading. (This girl—I’ve never known someone to re-read, re-watch, re-listen like her. The result is a memory like you’ve never seen. Wow.) As a result of both her reading choices and our communication, she has a powerfully calibrated BS meter.

If you are an artist or writer, pick up a book on child development. Something classic with proven results, preferably written before the huge cultural shift of 2014. I recommend starting with You Are Your Child’s First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin. The Big Disconnect by Catherine Steiner-Adair is also a good one dealing with kids’ access to online life and how it affects their brain development.

You should also find a way to spend time around children and get to know how they tick (and subject yourself to a background check where requested). Volunteer. Teach. Get to know your nieces and nephews. But as a creator, you must commit to serving children, not working out your own crap on their account. Of course, we work out our crap as we make art. But if you’re making work for minors, you’d better put several layers between your issues and their souls. YOU are not raising them, so work on your epistemic humility.

If you are an educator or librarian, or a book fan, I beg you to break out of the bubble of fandom, and to not focus on what’s hot and new, or to consider it your job to lead children toward “right beliefs”, but rather to reorient yourself toward the privilege of facilitating the dream of childhood. Consider your great responsibility, as you promote books, to always bear child development in mind, to shelf properly with the whole family in mind, and to de-politicize your work.

If you are a publishing professional, take stock of how much you interact with actual children. If the answer is a paltry one, and your choice of acquisitions has more to do with political clout or awards than a sense of service (not moralizing) toward other people’s children and their parents, take a step back and do some soul-searching. Our industry has produced some of the very best navigational tools for children that exist. I’m looking at my bookshelf right now and seeing everything from Arthur Rackham to the Provensens, Maurice Sendak to Gianni Rodari.

There’s a reason I make books today: because you made sure I had them as a kid. It’s a big ship to turn around, but we have got to steer it back toward service to the child, toward beauty and excellence and proper developmental formation, toward the magical way through the dark woods that keeps kids coming back to the same book again and again through their whole lives, and not just the punchline that gets the book put in the giveaway pile after one cheap read.

If parents, creators, educators and publishers consider themselves a team devoted to the service of child and whole family, we can do great things. Great things. We could restore a generation back toward wonder and healing the world, rather than tearing it down in the name of ideologies they don’t fully understand, and out of a desire to please adults who don’t have their best interest at heart. We could take that natural desire to please and to belong into account, and facilitate the child’s inner rest and peace, that would allow them to navigate this crazy world in security and joy, before they face it head-on as they fly solo.

Can you imagine what it might look like if that generation were leading us in twenty years?

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Comment below—what’s been your experience with the world of children’s literature? What are some of the most meaningful books you’ve encountered? Some of the more troubling? What was your relationship to books as a kid, or giving them to the kids in your life now? I’m eager to know about any aspect of this for you.

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