Novels with kids, for adults

[Chilly]

I've been reading some of Dickens' work lately, and I can't help but appreciate how he brings attention to kids. He was writing to adults mostly (well, to all ages), but all the novels of his that I have read have had kids as protagonists or as major characters (at least until they grow up). Were there others before him who really focused on kids, or was he starting something new there? I don't mean children's literature--I mean the concept of writing about kids so as to remind adults what it's like for kids, and to remind adults that kids have voices. Were there others before him (or during his time) who did that same sort of thing?

Also, did the fact that he wrote about kids change the way people perceived kids? I feel like it would, but I'm not sure.

It looks like even today, there are few authors who consistently write to general audiences but consistently write about kids at the same time. Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee have done it, but they seem to be a small minority. Any thoughts?

[kev67]

Yes, Dickens seems unusual in writing books for adults with child protagonists. Jane Eyre starts off as a little girl. I suppose just about any book described as a bildungsroman is going to have an underage protagonist. Wikipedia lists some interesting examples (link).

• Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, by Ibn Tufail (12th century), a precursor of the genre
• Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
• The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding (1749)
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne (1759)
• Candide, by Voltaire (1759)
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1850)
• Green Henry, by Gottfried Keller (1855)
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1861)
• Maurice, by E. M. Forster (written in 1913–14, published posthumously in 1971)
• What Maisie Knew, by Henry James (1897)
• Martin Eden, by Jack London (1909)
• The Book of Khalid, by Ameen Rihani (1911)
• Sons and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence (1913)
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce (1916)
• Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Hermann Hesse (1919,prologue added in 1960)
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920)
• Pather Panchali, by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (1929)
• Black Boy, by Richard Wright (1945),
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (1951)
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (for plot character Eustace Scrubb) by C. S. Lewis (1952)
• Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth (1959)
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (1960)
• Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)
• The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton (1967)
• Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya (1972)
• The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (1973)
• Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney (1984)
• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card (1985)
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson (1985)
• Norwegian_Wood, by Haruki Murakami (1987)
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky (1999)
• The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd (2002)
• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
• Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
• Indecision, by Benjamin Kunkel (2005)
• Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (2006)
• The Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling (1997-2007)
• Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

[mona amon]

Two more - The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy and Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner. Both very good but nothing like Dickens. He was the true master, especially when writing about the waif, the orphan, the abused child.

[Calidore]

It's technically a novella, but Stephen King's The Body would fit. His It also spends a great deal of time with the protagonist ensemble as children.

[kelby_lake]

Lolita, sort of.

[hazelk]

"The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas" by John Boyne.

[Eiseabhal]

A High Wind in Jamaica
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