More on darkness in children's fiction.

So, there's this opinion piece in the New York Times.

About, you know, darkness in children's fiction.

(Sound familiar?)

Before you get all worked up, this one isn't like That Other Article.

(And note that it's in the opinion section, not the regular books section.)

It's thoughtful, and not at all Oh-Noes-Won't-You-Think-of-the-Children-Who-Incidentally-All-Have-Exactly-the-Same-Worldview-As-Me. (Betsy has a good round-up of varied responses.)

However.

It does lump children's and middle grade and YA fiction all into the same category.

Which is a problem.

And I felt that The Graveyard Book was a strange example to use as evidence of the shift towards Teh Darkness, because it's very reminiscent of the classics that she writes about so positively. But, you know. Everyone looks at things differently and so on.

I thought this bit was especially interesting, in a somewhat unrelated way:

These are the traditional villains of children’s books — fabulous monsters with a touch of the absurd. Like Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things and countless others, they walk a fine line between horror and zany eccentricity. They may frighten young readers, but their juvenile antics strip them of any real authority.

Because it made me think of Disney villains, and the shift they've made -- while they usually had comic sidekicks, Disney villains used to be legitimately scary:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04O2oVjeOuQ] 

And now, they're more like the ones that Tatar describes as epitomizing the Old Skool villain from children's literature.

Kinda weird, right?