I think that kids are far tougher than a lot of us realize. I remember being a kid. And I was pretty tough. And remember that our kind, until very recently, children were right there, not just with the nuclear family, but with the entire tribe or band. And tiny children witnessed birth. They witnessed death. They witnessed sickness. They witnessed gruesome injuries.
They also witnessed miracles and wonders. And kids can do it. So, I don’t really think there’s much information that kids can’t cope with. I mean, certainly, if you don’t have the language skills to understand a big word, that’s one thing. But I think kids are smart, and I trust them. One of my books takes place in Southeast Asia. It’s called Search for the Golden Moonbear.
And it talks about land mines. And there’s a picture of an amputee. And when you also think of reading things like nursery rhymes, they’re quite gruesome. Some of them were about the Black Death, you know. ‘Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posy, ashes, ashes
’ — that’s about the Black Death! Kids can take it. So I don’t hide anything from my readers. I think that they’re gonna take it and run with it.