Carolyn Gray

July 13, 2000

Hello, Daniel:

(At 4 years of age, my daughter Emma despises what she calls “guys in suits” — whether they’re Barney suits, Chuck E. Cheese suits or the ones with neckties. I’m so proud.)

I’m currently reading your “Five Novels” collection. Between you, de Paola and JK Rowling, I have become convinced that children’s literature is inherently more interesting than that of adults. After all, kids’ books have adventures, creativity, and muffin-eating polar bears. Grownup books roughly divide into two camps: pretentious crap that uses linguistic tricks for their own sake to cover up for a lack of story, and genre fiction running the gamut from John Grisham to Harlequin Romances.

When I read such great stuff as yours, I want to write again. Hell, I even want to learn to draw a little.

So there. Thanks for all that.

PS: I neglected to include my corrolary to the theory that kids’ books are more interesting than adults’: — children themselves are almost always more interesting than adults. After all, they haven’t had all the juice beaten out of them, and don’t have to ignore so much of the world around them to get by.

Were you aware that Tomie DePaola did illustrations for a book I wrote? ""The Wuggie Norple Story"" Probably out of print, like most everything of mine.