Children’s fiction is not great literature

Kent University was right – the best children’s books are better written, but only adult literature confronts the range of human experience, says Jonathan Myerson: The Guardian

Come on, University of Kent, why the grovelling retreat? Your creative writing website got it right first time. You know perfectly well that when you made a distinction between “great literature” and “mass-market thrillers or children’s fiction”, you were standing up for something. That Keats is different from Dylan, or, in this instance, that Philip Roth does say something rather more challenging than JK Rowling, that Jonathan Franzen does create storylines more ambiguous and questioning than Stephanie Meyer’s. What’s so wrong with that? I’ll go forward carrying the banner even if you won’t.