Sometimes you read an essay that makes the entirety of your Masters thesis feel like it was worth writing and that's huge. I've never shunned my love of children's literature, but I've spent what feels like a ridiculous amount of time feeling like I need to defend it to those who look down upon it (in my defense, no small part of the reasoning behind that is that there are simply so many Lit Bros and Fancy Academics who DO look down upon kid lit as inferior writing and Not Actual Literature). 

This essay felt like giving that prickly, defensive version of myself a hug, an affirmation saying "see? what you do is worthwhile, and a person who's super good at wording why it matters has given you fodder for the next time some jerk who writes exclusively lit fic starring a self-insert old dude perving on a sickeningly naive and gamine and 'lithe' ingenue tries to talk shit". 

I particularly resonated with the position that kid lit is written for two simultaneous audiences: the child and the adult that child will become/the child the writer and other adults once was/were. It's a tricky balance, and an important one, and it spits in the face of the idea that kid lit is dumbed down. 

I'm not wording this well. And that's okay; if you're interested in what this book actually has to say, you can read it within like an hour for yourself, and then stew in your own emotions about it.