ABSTRACT
In The Crossover Novel (Falconer, 2009) I argued that children’s fiction underwent a meteoric rise in popularity and critical esteem among adult readers over the decade 1997–2007. J. K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter’ series (1997–2007) is often seen as the catalyst but, although it precipitated more widespread changes in publishing and marketing strategies, which in turn had their impact on readers’ choices of consumption, the series was itself successful partly because the social and economic conditions were ripe for such a shift in perspective on children’s literature. Thus, it should be viewed as part of a larger cultural change in contemporary Western society which accords greater weight and value to the signifier, the ‘child’, than in previous decades (whether this translates to more actual power for real children remains open to debate). In Britain, the history of children’s literature crossing to adult readers is long and well established. Although published for children, Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1863), Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872) were recognized as ‘serious’ works by Victorian adult readers. In the twentieth century, the global popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954–5) and Richard Adams’s Watership Down (1972), not to mention the ‘Star Wars’ films, gives evidence of ‘crossover phenomena’ existing avant la lettre. But we now have la lettre; in other words, the publishing industry, and readers in general, recognize the crossover phenomenon to the degree that it can now be named and acknowledged as legitimate.
