Oh, Dave Itzkoff:
As someone whose subway rides tend to resemble scenes from an “Evil Dead” movie, in which I am Bruce Campbell dodging zombies who have had all traces of their humanity sucked out of them by a sinister book — not the “Necronomicon,” but “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” — I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers. I suppose J. K. Rowling could give me 1.12 billion reasons in favor of it: get your formula just right and you can enjoy worldwide sales, film and television options, vibrating-toy-broom licensing fees, Chinese-language bootlegs of your work, a kind of limited immortality (L. Frank Baum who?) and — finally — genuine grown-up readers. But where’s the artistic satisfaction? Where’s the dignity?
Trust me when I say that many of us think that zombies of the brain-sucking variety have long since shown up on your subway ride.
I realize that he’s probably just trying to be cute here. Sadly, the only real counterargument offered in the review itself is basically that you can put all kinds of crazy stuff in books for kids. I’m also pretty curious as to whether he’s read enough YA to declare something "one of the most imaginative young adult novels of the post-Potter era."
Though, in this case, I actually agree and am glad to see Un Lun Dun getting some love.
And this is interesting — a plug for Nine Hundred Grandmothers is always a good thing. (Via Scott Edelman.)
