Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

6.2
 
Allalderslitteratur 
In the previous chapter, we have looked at the changing conditions for an updated 
canon of British children fantasy literature, its interaction with external influences and the 
consequences this entails for its content. Another important factor for the current and the 
future development of the canon is the recent phenomenon of allalderslitteratur. A specific 
canon for children and a canon for adults do not just differ in their respective contents, topics, 
literary preferences and priorities but also in their target group. The term allalderslitteratur 
takes up the new development of the crossing, loosening or even dissolving of borders, in 
particular that of the increasing fuzziness or even merging of target groups.
14
Kümmerling-Meibauer defines allalderslitteratur as a crossing of age borders between 
literature for children and literature for adults, which results in the fact that works cannot be 
easily categorised any more as one or the other, since they comprise both at the same time. 
The term is either Norwegian (allalderslitteratur) or Swedish (allålderslitteratur) and means 
that those works that can be classed as allalderslitteratur address all age groups, not just one 
14
Kümmerling-Meibauer traces the term allalderslitteratur back to U.C. Knoepflmacher; Mitzi Myers. “From the 
Editors: ‘Cross-Writing’ and the Reconceptualising of Children’s Literature Studies”. In: Children’s Literature 
25 (1997): Special Issue on Cross-Writing Child and Adult, vii-xvii. See also Deborah Cogan Thacker; Jean 
Webb. Introducing Children’s Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism. London; New York: 
Routledge, 2002, p. 9.

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specific one. Kümmerling-Meibauer mentions Jostein Gaarder and Peter Pohl as typical 
representatives of this approach.
15
In Introducing Children’s Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism, Cogan 
Thacker and Webb also address this phenomenon. They point out that “the attraction of 
children’s fiction for an adult audience can be seen as part of the postmodern condition.”
16
This means that adults are starting to become genuinely interested in children’s literature, not 
just as mediators but as readers in their own right. This reorientation is more and more 
frequently taken up and implemented by the authors of the genre. In contrast to past practices 
nowadays authors tend to refrain from a certain pinch of arrogance by no longer trying to 
address adult readers without the child noticing
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and at its expense. As a popular example 
Cogan Thacker and Webb cite another example of allalderslitteratur. The ever-present Harry 
Potter
series, which appeals to adults and children, is typical of this new phenomenon. 
Despite the fact that the series is artificially separated into a children’s and an adult edition by 
the publishers, classed by the authors as “a cynical marketing ploy”,
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the popularity of Harry 
Potter
with an adult audience is unfailing. This mutual crossing of borders implies that adults 
and children explore and test the permeability of their literature in both form and content. 
Such a reorientation on both sides fuels the debate of the definition of children’s and adult 
literature and could even suggest their possible merging at some point in the future. Alongside 
with the literary definition arises the query into the change of the understanding of the concept 
of both childhood and child on the one hand and that of adulthood and adults on the other.
Mortimer also openly opposes any artificial age limits for literature. Supporting the 
concept of allalderslitteratur, she vehemently contradicts the forcing of the reader into a rigid 
pattern and points out that the construct of average children does not exist.
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Consequently, if 
there is no average child, then there cannot be any average adult, either. Thus questioning the 
validity of age groups for readers and their arbitrary arrangement and polarisation, Mortimer 
15
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Kinderliteratur, Kanonbildung und literarische Wertung, p. 249. Complex novels as 
rich in content and depth and intertextual as Sophie’s World or His Dark Materials have a wide appeal to all 
age groups.
16
Cogan Thacker; Webb, Introducing Children’s Literature, p. 147. 
17
Ibd., p. 146. 
18
Ibd., p. 147.
19
Penelope Mortimer. “Thoughts Concerning Children’s Books”. In: Egoff; Stubbs; Ashley (Eds.) Only