ABSTRACT
Not every genre of children's literature has a corresponding adult genre—school stories being one example—and it is only recently that the horror novel and murder mystery have returned to children's literature. Historical novels for adults and children both have an honourable and independent pedigree; but while children's fantasy enjoys a far longer and more distinguished tradition than adult fantasy, which only became a commercial genre after Tolkien's success in the 1960s, children's science fiction (SF) is considered the poor relation both of adult science fiction and children's fantasy. In this chapter I shall discuss why this is so, and demonstrate how, since the 1950s, writers specialising in children's and teenage science fiction have raised the literary standard of the genre.
