On Writing a Book for Children Who Had the Nerve to Grow Up / 2 March 2026

One of the more comical aspects of this whole writing journey is that the story I’m finishing now was originally meant for younger members of my family.

At the time, I had the very satisfying thought: I shall write them something wonderful. Something adventurous. Something with mystery, danger, and the kind of magic or weirdness that makes you keep turning pages long after you were meant to brush your teeth and go to bed.

It was, I thought, an excellent plan.

Unfortunately, while I was procrastinating, revising, overthinking, and occasionally pretending that making notes counted as actual progress, the intended audience committed an act of betrayal by getting older.

Children, I’ve learned, do not pause development out of courtesy to artists.

So yes, I am now in the faintly absurd position of finishing a book for readers who were once exactly the right age and are now wandering off into newer interests with the indifference of people who do not appreciate how long chapter seventeen took.

But I’m not actually bothered by that. If anything, it’s clarified the job.

Writing for middle-grade readers means respecting them. Not talking down to them. Not flattening the world into something overly tidy. Children understand stakes, humour, unfairness, courage, and nonsense extremely well. Often better than adults, who tend to overcomplicate things and call it sophistication.

So I’ve kept the spirit of the story aimed at the readers it was written for in the first place: curious, imaginative, sharp, and ready to be taken seriously.

If the original family audience has outgrown it, that’s fine. They were the spark, not the limit. And who knows — perhaps they’ll still read it one day and kindly pretend they never doubted me.