# Has a character from children's lit ever become an adult lit character? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 22, 2006, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372 "2006-03-22T00:08:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/41 "2006-03-23T21:32:33Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Hmmm… the Murry family and Calvin are quite definitely protagonists in several books in which they grow up and age. Each seems to have center stage in a different book: Meg in _A Wrinkle in Time_, the youngest boy in the sequels, the twins Sandy and Denys (minor supporting characters in the _Wrinkle_ series) being the protagonists in _Many Waters_, and then Calvin and Meg’s kids including Polyhymnia (whose problems with Poly vs Polly I strongly sympathize with! ;)) in yet another series of novels. The range appears to be from children’s novels to young adult, but that’s an artifact of Farrar’s marketing strategy; I don’t believe L’Engle herself ever intended to target specific audiences. Some of these characters also show up in her novels for adults. I don’t know to what extent L’Engle indicted age ranges for her own books, but I’m thinking of things like _Certain Women_ and _Wasp_ that include mature sexual themes that for me, clearly, make them books for adults and not for children. The main characters are all adults, and they often deal with mundane grown-up issues that would bore most kids to tears. ---
**Author:** ![alice\_in\_wonderland](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alice_in_wonderland/32/176_2.png) [@alice\_in\_wonderland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alice_in_wonderland)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/42 "2006-03-23T21:40:31Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Alan Moore’s upcoming completed treatment of _The Lost Girls_ posits erotica featuring grown-up versions of **Alice in Wonderland** , Wendy Darling of Peter Pan and Dorothy Gale from Oz. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/43 "2006-03-23T21:55:41Z")
_A Wizard of Earthsea_ is a great example. In the first book, the protagonist (Ged) is a brash teenager. In the last book (at least, the last that I’ve read), he’s a very old man. The first book is much more intended for children; the latter is very much an adult’s book. Not because of graphic content: quite the contrary. Its concepts are very abstract, and there’s a deep sadness to it that I think would be hard for a child to understand. Indeed, I suspect that when I reread it as an old man it’ll be far more powerful to me. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2006, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/44 "2006-03-23T22:43:15Z")
Well, it’s not literature, but if you count “The 400 Blows” as a kid’s film, then Antoine Doinel could count – he grew over the course of five or six films, and AFAIK, the later films definitely weren’t kids films. David Balfour from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped” _might_ also count – “Kidnapped” is a great adventure of a kid’s book, but I’ve heard that the sequel, “Catriona” is a more adult-minded romance. Haven’t read it though, so I can’t guarantee. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/45 "2006-03-24T01:10:17Z")
I _knew_ I hadn’t imagined this: one Frederic Tuten wrote a {presumably authorised} adult novel about boy reporter Tintin, that perennial kids’ comic hero, entitled [**Tintin In The New World**](http://www.tintinologist.org/articles/novel.html) : “Claudia slowly draws down Tintin’s boxer shorts, leaving them heaped around his ankles.” Phwooar! However, if the ghastly prose is anything to go by, it seems to be the worst kind of pomo revisionist up-its-arse claptrap: “What wrong and what wrongdoer”, Tintin continued sadly, “are there left to stalk when now I know I would need to stalk the tracks of every living human, for all are guilty, even as they sleep, guilty of mischief done or yet to be done? The human womb breeds human monsters, sucking eel mouths of desire and wilfulness.” To which I can only respond “Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles in ten thousand thundering typhoons!” ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/46 "2006-03-24T03:08:57Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > David Balfour from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped” _might_ also count – “Kidnapped” is a great adventure of a kid’s book, but I’ve heard that the sequel, “Catriona” is a more adult-minded romance. Haven’t read it though, so I can’t guarantee. Catriona definitely wouldn’t appeal to the average teenage boy reader of Kidnapped, but might appeal to the average teenage girl reader of Kidnapped. It’s a romance, with hardly any swash in its buckle, and spends an inordinate amount of time working out David’s emotional relationship to Catriona. I mean, really! where’s the excitement in that?!? (and no, before anyone starts speculating, it’s a late Victorian romance, so not even any nudge-nudge-wink-wink going on. David and Catriona share a set of rooms at one point, in a perfectly chaste way.) ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/47 "2006-03-24T04:23:56Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > I _knew_ I hadn’t imagined this: one Frederic Tuten wrote a {presumably authorised} adult novel about boy reporter Tintin, that perennial kids’ comic hero, entitled [**Tintin In The New World**](http://www.tintinologist.org/articles/novel.html) : “Claudia slowly draws down Tintin’s boxer shorts, leaving them heaped around his ankles.” Phwooar! WHAT. My faith in humanity has just been utterly and completely destroyed. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/48 "2006-03-24T04:33:48Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > The late Angela Carter made something of a specialty of short stories which re-told classic fairytales such as Cinderella and Bluebeard in decidedly adult fashion. She also wrote _Alice in Prague_, an adult short story which was a tribute to Czech animator Jan Svankmayer’s “grown-up” film **Alice**. Of course, most of the fairytales we’re familiar with now are redacted versions, sanitized in the Victorian era so that they were suitable for children. The old original tales are bloody, sexy, violent, nasty, great stories. Carter’s retellings are much closer to the orignals in feel. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/49 "2006-03-24T04:52:46Z")
> [@Kythereia](#): > > My faith in humanity has just been utterly and completely destroyed. Appalling, isn’t it? What I can’t figure out is how he ever got permission from the copyright holders - Herge’s estate, presumably - to take a big steaming shit all over their beloved characters. My childhood has just been sullied. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/50 "2006-03-24T06:10:07Z")
This sounds like a cool idea for a genre of fanfic - that’s not pornographic. I would LOVE to read “Ramona Quimby, Age 28” or “Encyclopedia Brown: CSI” ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/51 "2006-03-24T09:36:29Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Alan Moore’s upcoming completed treatment of _The Lost Girls_ posits erotica featuring grown-up versions of Alice in Wonderland, Wendy Darling of Peter Pan and Dorothy Gale from Oz. You are _slipping_, mate: Volume Two of Moore and O’Neill’s **The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen** features cameo appearances, in the guise of Doctor Moreau’s beast-men, of [Puss in Boots, Mole, Rat, Toad and Badger from **The Wind in the Willows** , and none other than Rupert the Bear](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Extraordinary_Gentlemen). It’s worth the price of admission just to see the freak-out weird Kevin O’Neill draw Rupert, a much-loved English children’s character. Even more children’s characters and settings - Narnia, Alice, Noddy, Doctor Doolittle, and far too many others to mention by name - are referenced in the appendix to Volume 2, which is mind-boggling in its breadth: the universe the principal characters inhabit seems to be composed of every fictional work ever written, all deftly interwoven, and Moore seems to have _read_ them all. The man’s a bloody genius. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/52 "2006-03-24T13:09:38Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > I would LOVE to read … “Encyclopedia Brown: CSI” Good idea, but unfortunately [Mr. Brown is no longer with us](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29537). ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/53 "2006-03-24T14:16:38Z")
> [@Thudlow Boink](#): > > Good idea, but unfortunately [Mr. Brown is no longer with us](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29537). “The case of Encyclopedia Brown’s Mangled Corpse”–snerk! (FWIW, it’s pretty clear that the murderer is **the reporter**. He tries to throw suspicion onto Meany with the false quote about the north pole and penguins, but earlier in the story he refers to Brown’s expert testimony about a peacock’s egg. Brown would never have offered such testimony: pea **hen** s lay eggs, not peacocks. The reporter is clearly hiding something!) Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372/54 "2006-03-24T18:33:47Z")
T H White’s “The Once & Future King” usually appears in one volume. But the first of four sections was also published separately as “The Sword & The Stone.” It recounted Merlin’s education of the young Arthur & is a children’s book–for kids who don’t mind a bit of allegory & some slightly creaky whimsy. (This adult doesn’t mind either in this setting.) In the following three sections, Arthur grows from young man to aging king. The style & content are much more adult. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-character-from-childrens-lit-ever-become-an-adult-lit-character/349372.md?page=2)