Roald Dahl and Astrid Lindgren
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In their writing careers, both Roald Dahl and Astrid Lindgren devoted themselves to producing quality children's literature that specifically addressed the concerns and interests of adolescence. Indeed, in crafting stories with these issues in mind, Dahl and Lindgren write for a particular readership, namely that of children. Certainly this type of writing has particular advantages, as the writers are able to tailor their works to a child audience instead of struggling to produce books that somehow manage to appeal to a dual readership of children and adults. There is clear evidence of the advantages of writing for a single readership in Dahl's The Witches and Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking, as both writers shape their stories in order to engage exclusively with a child readership. As a result, both The Witches and Pippi Longstocking take on a fantastic yet simple charm that would seem impossible to create when writing a book that aims for a dual readership. Clearly, the mindset of young readers is quite different from that of an adult audience. In writing for children, Dahl and Lindgren have the advantage of speaking to a group that still possesses a sense of innocence and wonder. Adult readers tend to be more cynical and weary, scrutinizing texts with a certain amount of skepticism (Egoff 45). Indeed, Dahl and Lindgren are able to exploit the fact that children maintain a more simplified view of the world around them. They perceive their environment in bla
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child would envy, full of freedom and amusement. When the adults of the town discover Pippi's situation, they immediately attempt to control the girl's life by placing her in a children's home. As is the case when the narrator and his grandmother succeed in destroying the Grand High Witch in The Witches, when Pippi manages to avoid following the wishes of the adults and remain alone in her own home, there is a sense that justice has prevailed. Because they are writing solely for a child readership, Lindgren and Dahl are able to address these types of complex themes in a simple, straightforward manner that still manages to have great impact upon their readers. Indeed, both Pippi Longstocking and The Witches convey the idea that there is nothing childish about the problems that children experience.
But writing with the concerns of children in mind does not mean that Dahl and Lindgren are confined to depicting supernatural, mystical, or comical events. Indeed, both writers are also able to tap into the fears and insecurities that mark childhood. In this way, Dahl and Lindgren are free to produce texts that are both whimsical and profound (Lukens 3). In fact, both Dahl's narrator in The Witches and Lindgren's title charac
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Approximate Word count = 1957
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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