Easy? PLEASEy!

I think the kidlitosphere has well covered "Read Roger's" recent comments about adults who read children's books, but I did want to add something that came to mind.

Children's books are not necessarily easy for adults to read: in fact, children's books can be much more difficult for adults to read than for children. Diana Wynne Jones is the classic example, and she is well aware of that fact herself; she's written that children find her books much easier to deal with than adults do because they're used to accepting all sorts of things they don't understand. (I'm paraphrasing, unfortunately, because I can't find the quote.)

Getting into the right head space to truly do justice to a children's book can be quite challenging. I only wish I could read Jones like I did when I was a child.

Some adults may indeed decide to study children's literature expecting it to be a sinecure, but I'd like to think there are professors out there making life a little more difficult and interesting for them than they expected.