Yesterday I wrote about child prodigies (and specifically the case of Sufiah Yusof, a child prodigy in math who went on to become a prostitute). There are child prodigies in many different walks of life from music to sports. One area of this that I find to be really interesting is the child prodigies of literature.

There have been many different child authors throughout history. In ancient times, many of these were kids who wrote poetry or diaries but then died at a young age and the work was published post-humously in a sort of “what could have been” look at where their literary careers may have gone if they had lived into adulthood.

In modern times, child authors are a bit more complex. These are typically kids who write a book (often with the help of a parent or grandparent) and who then get picked up by a publisher as a result of a parent or guardian’s persistence. The children then get marketed widely and are adored by the public because they’ve written a published book before they’ve reached adulthood.

What do you make of these kids? Are they really literary prodigies or are they simply smart kids who got their fifteen minutes of fame for their writing because their parents wanted them to and the market supported them in that?

I definitely think that these kids should be admired. It’s tough to sit down and write a book at any age. If they’re writing stories instead of playing with their friends and watching TV then they’re exercising their natural sense of artistic expression and I think that’s terrific. But I’m not sure that these kids are really prodigies per se.

Tags: books, child authors, kids who wrote books, published kids, writing