How many times has writing children’s and youth literature been seen as minor? The reality, however, is very different. Books for children and adolescents fulfill a great educational and also personal function.
These stories, from those first children’s stories to novels for teenagers, create adults educated in values, with great imagination and lovers of books.
If as an author you want to start writing children’s and youth fiba hub literature and contribute your grain of sand to such an important and necessary genre, keep reading and join this journey.
History of children’s and youth literature: a journey of magic and literature
If you think back, surely you cannot find a moment in your life in which literature, in one form or another, has not been present.
Stories are part of our individual history because they are also part of our collective history. As a society we have always needed children’s book ghostwriter to tell stories to understand the world, and stories are the simplest but at the same time most complete way to explain reality to those who need to understand it most:
Although there are some common characteristics to the different children’s and adolescent literary works of history, there are other elements that have evolved.
A journey of magic and literature
Children’s and youth literature: a journey with some constants
If we analyze children’s and youth literature throughout history, we will see that there are things that are repeated:
- Simple language.
- The narrative genre prevails.
- Closed and simplified structure of approach, middle and Internetchicks end normally developed in one time and one place.
- Topics with which the children and adolescent public can identify.
From classic stories to new horizons: a look at the evolution of literature for young people through iconic authors and influential works
However, there are aspects that have changed. To begin with, it should be said that children’s and youth literature was not such until the 16th century. Before there were no books written specifically for children, but rather they learned to read and read books for adults or, generally, religious texts.
Nowadays, however, children and adolescents are a very powerful reading audience that authors and editors have in mind when creating and publishing. What was the process like to get there?
Middle Ages and Renaissance
At this time, the illiteracy of society (especially among children and youth) and the fact that the printing press had not yet arrived, made any reading very complicated. Consequently, adults and children shared books, some of these being collections of educational stories such as The Count Lucan or.
Therefore, the little that the children read already had a marked educational character, something that has been maintained over the years.
The 17th and 18th centuries
With the arrival of the printing press, writing, publishing and reading books became much more accessible. Also for children and young people, since in these years we have received the first written samples of stories such as Cinderella or Puss in Boots (collected in a collection by the French author Charles Perrault) or Fabulario, the compilation of illustrated fables by the Spanish Sebastian May.
To these works are added many others, already expressly written for children, such as the literary magazine La Gaeta de loss nines (published in Madrid) or Robinson Crusoe (by Daniel Defoe) or Gulliver’s Travels (by Jonathan Swift), these are already adventure novels aimed at a young audience.
XIX century
The 19th century is the century of Romanticism and therefore of the rise of fantasy, a very relevant genre from then on in children’s and youth literature.
This is also the century of authors like the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote stories like Snow White and The Ugly Duckling, respectively.
In the more youthful sphere, Jules Verne left us novels such as Journey to the Center of the Earth and Lewis Carroll published his famous Alice in Wonderland.
Within Spain, in addition to the appearance of the editor Saturnine Calera, totally focused on the children’s audience, he published his short story work Cecilia Buhl de Faber (with the pseudonym Fernand Caballero) and the first edition of Platero y you by Juan Ramón Jiménez also appeared., which was a Book Marketing Agency that was successful among children.
The 20th century
The arrival of the 20th century was very important in shaping the children’s and youth literature that we know today. At this time is when the focus is placed on the child’s psychology to establish what topics to cover (mainly those that have to do with feelings, dreams, desires, freedom… An example of this is Peter Pan by JM Barrie, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Expiry, or Mary Poppins by Pamela Travers).
In the 20th century, adolescents also received works increasingly aimed at their problems. Thus, the novel Rebelled by Susan Eloise Hinton appears, but also comics that are now classics and have marked many generations (such as Tinting or Mortadella and Philemon as Espuma).
This boom in publications was followed by the opening of school libraries and more importance was given to the power that literature had to educate in values. This became evident especially after the Second World War.
The 21st century
We come to the present, which is the time of children’s and youth sagas as important worldwide as JK Rowling’s Harry Potter. In Spain, important collections are also published, such as Manuelito Gavottes by Elvira Lindon or Memories de Ishan by Laura Galego.
Furthermore, editorials dedicated to children and young people are becoming more and more important. As if this were not enough, a phenomenon called crossover has appeared and refers to those novels, such as The Hunger Games by Susan Collins, that are aimed at a young but also adult audience.
The passing of the years, and the evidence of how fundamental it is in society, has helped to revalue children’s literature and to have it studied at an academic level and in textbooks.
How to create attractive characters when writing children’s and youth literature
Creating fictional characters is one of the great challenges in the life of any writer. That these are convincing and, above all, that they generate empathy in readers is essential for the story to be successful.
That is even more important when writing children’s and youth literature, since it is through the fictional characters that this demanding audience connects with the plot. If not, think about the books that marked you as a child. Maybe you don’t remember the plot in detail, but you do remember the names of the characters, who was your favorite or which one you identified with.
Magic Between the Pages: How to Bring Memorable Characters to Life in Young Adult Literature
Creating a literary character for children is not the same as creating one for adults. The child character requires a simplicity that does not mean simplicity in his writing. Nor does it imply falling into stereotypes.
The fundamental thing is to give them life, because in the mind and life of a child the character will have it. Have you never played at being your favorite literary character as a child?
To help you in this process of creating memorable characters, we share these tips with you:
- Be inspired by real characters that a child can empathize with and recognize.
- It reveals the character in its entirety, from his physical appearance to his thoughts.
- Pay special attention to the description of the character’s physique, looking for it to have characteristic and therefore memorable features.
- Both the language with which the character speaks and the language with which you speak about the character must be adapted to the age of your audience.
- Choose a catchy name for your characters.
- It is important that the main character is dynamic, as he will set the course of the story. The secondary characters are also important, but they should never be more relevant than the protagonist, who should always be described as the leader.
- Listen to children and young people, learn about what they like, investigate which books are the best sellers or which characters are the most famous among them.
Beyond words: The importance of representation and diversity in youth characters
Controversies such as the one that arose because the actress who plays “The Little Mermaid” is black or that people do not like that a Disney short starring a fat girl are proof that there is still a lot of work to do in terms of representation. However, the good news is that when this diversity is shown in children’s settings, it is educated in values such as tolerance and respect. Because normally it is not the children who have a problem with this representation, but rather they accept it and normalize it.
For these reasons, if you are a writer of youth literature, do not hesitate to create characters that show the plural reality in which we live. Also do it without stereotyping, but simply betting on diversity. Remember that literature is an educational tool.
