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Originally posted by robbiez666:
I honestly think that his latter writing has been aimed more at the mainstream than writing what Neil wants to right. I'm not sure whether its a conscious effort or people around him pointing him in that direction. I think he wants to move from a "cult" writer to a more celebrated one.

but its my opinion

http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/angel09.gif

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Originally posted by cloverheart:
Well, about Coraline and her father's meals... she's a kid, and kids like pizaa and hot dogs and the prepared stuff, not home made fine food. I was like that, most kids are.

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I found myself thinking as I wrote, "These poor adults are never going to understand this; I must explain it to them twice more and then remind them again later in different terms." Now this is something I never have to think when I write for younger readers. Children are used to making an effort to understand. They are asked for this effort every hour of every school day and, though they may not make the effort willingly, they at least expect it ...

At first I thought [this] was my own assumption, based on personal experiences. Once when I was doing a signing, a mother came in with her nine-year-old son and berated me for making The Homeward Bounders so difficult. So I turned to the boy to ask him what he didn't understand. "Oh, don't listen to her," he said. "I understood everything. It was just her that didn't" ...

This makes an absurd situation. Here we have books for children, which a host of adults dismiss as puerile, over-easy, and are no such thing; and there we have books for adults, who might be supposed to need something more advanced and difficult, which we have to write as if the readers were simple-minded.