Wait, does any of this have anything to do with Priory of Scion or a White Witch? LOL. Isn't all of this kids-lit just tail-chasing derivative baloney that imitates each of the preceding and foregoing. Whether it's Hogwarts or Jordan College, isn't it just all the same stuff? Everyone wants to be Roald Dahl or Frank Baum or Lewis Carroll, but none of these folks can pull it off without gilding the lily and piling the heap higher with garbage.

To say that all children's literature (and why do you include "The Da Vinci Code"? I mean sure it prose does look like a 10 year old wrote it, but still....)is the same makes me wonder if perhaps you'd ever read more than a handful of children's book. Sure a great number of them deal with the fears and excitement of growing older, but I would never compare Dahl's "Matilda" with Rowling's "Harry Potter". Every story that's well-written offers something new, even if you read it more than once.

On a side note, why do people so often denigrate children's literature? I proudly admit to having read Roald Dahl's "Matilda" recently and I re-read with some alarming frequency the Harry Potter series.

-my point wasn't to denigrate kid-lit; it was to express fatigue with derivative authors who are less than original, or conversely, who hide that lack of originality under a heap of precious, over-written plots. It's true for Michael Chabon as it is for kid-lit authors. No offense to legit kid-lit intended...

I understand, but just one little point (no meanness intended at all). Is it possible to come up with an original idea, not including an original formal idea, these days? It seems to me that it's not possible. Every book, movie, whatever seems to be described with phrases like "if you liked The Wizard of Oz and Kill Bill, then you'll love The Creature". Just a thought.

Another, random, note, I actually like reading books like Harry Potter and seeing where the books roots are.