Adventure Novels For Children
Adventure novels written specifically for children began in the 19th century. Early examples include Johann David Wyss' The Swiss Family Robinson (1812), Frederick Marryat's The Children of the New Forest (1847) and Harriet Martineau's Sweeney Todd (1856). The Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with W.H.G. Kingston, R. M. Ballantyne and G. A. Henty specializing in the production of adventure fiction for boys. This inspired writers who normally catered to adult audience to essay such works, such as Robert Louis Stevenson writing Treasure Island for a child readership. In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries, while Geoffrey Trease, Rosemary Sutcliff and Esther Forbes brought a new sophistication to the historical adventure novel. Modern writers such as Mildred D. Taylor (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry) and Philip Pullman (the Sally Lockhart novels) have continued the tradition of the historical adventure. The modern children's adventure novel sometimes deals with controversial issues like terrorism (Robert Cormier, After the First Death, (1979)) and warfare in the Third World (Peter Dickinson, AK, (1990)).
Read more about this topic: Adventure Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words adventure, novels and/or children:
“In the court of the movie Owner, none criticized, none doubted. And none dared speak of art. In the Owner’s mind art was a synonym for bankruptcy.... The movie Owners are the only troupe in the history of entertainment that has never been seduced by the adventure of the entertainment world.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“I have just opened Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning” for the first time, which I read with great delight. It is more like what Scott’s novels were than anything.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)