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Athelstone posted an update 3 weeks, 5 days ago
OK. A question, dear denisons. Can an author writing for children in the under 10 range include murder in the story? I have a friend who’s a published author for older children and adults who has written a fine story (my guess is 7-12 yo with more sophisticated funny bits for any adults reading to their kids) but it includes a murder. Is this OK? No, not a gory American Psycho murder with scalpels and chainsaws, but still a murder.
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Harry Potter has murder…
Skulduggery Pleasant also has murder. In fact, if Amazon is anything to go by, there’s loads of murder out there.
Thanks for that. Yes, my view was that it should be fine, but it does seem that the publishing world imposes rules for children’s books these days. I don’t want to get into a debate on the merits of these, but it’s important to know them as an author, if only to stop wasting time writing stuff that will never be published. In this particular case I think the author has to take a hard look at her text and decide what age range she’s aiming at. Part of the issue is that she’s had a sort of “working cover” drawn by a cartoonist at the paper she works on. It’s a great cartoon, very professional and sums up many of the elements in the story, but I have a suspicion it’s pitched squarely at the younger end of a possible readership and that this has prompted her doubts.