Walt Wangerin has started a great series of posts on his blog, Between Us. Check out part one, in which he discusses Maurice Sendak and the necessity of wild things.
Adults who write to their image of a child, rather than writing to genuine children, do in a real sense utter baby talk. And they miss the mark of a child’s intense experience. They make a conventional assumption of pastel innocence, angelic goodness, fresh unsullied souls (“trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God, who is our home”)—and in consequence their language lisps, their menu of topics is reduced to the sugar cookie, and their attitude is offensive. Even as they presume to know better than the child, they present a teller and a tale too simple and simply less than a child can (and ought to, and wants to) experience. Simpletons tell simplistic tales.