No Kids Allowed

What do Adam Mansbach's Go the F**k to Sleep and Barbara Park's MA! There's Nothing to Do Here! A Word from your Baby-in-Waiting have in common? Both are large-format picture books that you might find in the children's section of your local bookstore. However, their subject matter is decidedly intended for parents rather than children. In No Kids Allowed, Michelle Ann Abate examines a constellation of such books which she argues form a paradoxical new genre: children's literature for adults.

Distinguishing children's literature for adults from YA and middle-grade fiction that appeals to adult readers, Abate argues that there is something unique and fascinating about this phenomenon in contemporary US culture. While historical studies of children's literature show that its relationship with adulthood is varied and complex, Abate suggests that this recent outcropping has its genesis with the 1986 publication of Dr. Seuss's You're Only Old Once!, cleverly subtitled A Book for Obsolete Children. Principally defined by its form and audience, children's literature, Abate demonstrates, engages with more than mere nostalgia when recast for grown-up readers. Parodies, politics, innuendo, and knowing prose captured in simple language and colorful illustrations do not infantilize adult readers; instead, they suggest that the relationship between childhood and adulthood may be something other than linear.

Ultimately, Abate explores what happens to children's literature when arguably its most fundamental characteristic is removed: a readership of children. No Kids Allowed is the first book-length study of children's literary forms—including board books, coloring books, bedtime stories, and series detective fiction—written and published specifically for an adult audience. Abate's project examines how these narratives question the boundaries of children's literature while they simultaneously challenge the longstanding Western assumption that adulthood and childhood are separate and even mutually exclusive.