James Baldwin's only children's book: a four-year-old named TJ on a Harlem block, written for his nephew and illustrated by a French painter he had known since 1959.
Children's books
Books for children by writers who spent their careers writing for adults — usually one apiece, usually for a particular child, and usually stranger than the shelf they were sold on.
Writers known for difficult adult books occasionally produce one book for children, and the results rarely sit comfortably in the children's section. The audience is real — these were written to be read by or to a child — but the writer arrives with the only equipment they have, which is the equipment they built for everyone else.
James Baldwin's Little Man, Little Man is this shelf's first entry and shows the pattern clearly. He wrote it in 1976 for his nephew Tejan, set it on a Harlem block, and wrote every line in the speech the children on that block actually used. It was illustrated by Yoran Cazac, a French painter with no experience of children's books whom Baldwin had met in Paris in 1959. Reviewers could not decide whether it was a book for children or a book about them, and it stayed out of print for forty years until a university press brought it back.
That is the usual fate of these books, and the reason to keep them together rather than scattered among the story collections. They are the least-read titles in their authors' catalogues, they are short enough to finish in one sitting, and they show a writer working without the defences the adult books allow.
The children's books we recommend
Other styles on the shelf
The Friday Letter
One remarkable children's books pick, when it earns it.
The Friday letter explains one book at a time — what style it works in, why that matters, and where to go next.