Enigma’s Variation: the Puzzling Mysteries of Avi, Ellen Raskin, Diana Wynne Jones, and Chris Van Allsburg

Abstract

Formulaic mysteries are appropriate for child readers, it is sometimes claimed, not because formula fiction has its place in anyone’s reading fare, but on the grounds that, as they read, children are learning about the mode of mystery writing itself. The young, it is implied, do not require nuanced, complex, or allusive mysteries. Similarly, it is asserted:

The researcher of children’s literature cannot operate in the categories of ‘originality, novelty, stylistic experiment’ … as are applied to modern (that is, 20th century) adult literature. Devices and patterns that may seem to betoken lack of originality, plagiarism, secondarily, in adult literature are a deliberate creative approach in children’s books. (Nikolajeva, Magic, 118)

Comments like these, which are surprisingly common, have as their subtext a notion that in some way our expectations of children’s literature can be ‘lower’ than our expectations of adult literature. While formulaic writing and derivativeness may be a ‘deliberate creative approach’ in some children’s texts (as they are in some adult works), it is surely reductive to suggest that we should not expect stylistic experiment and originality in children’s literature. This essay examines fiction by Avi, Ellen Raskin, Diana Wynne Jones, and Chris Van Allsburg in order to show the varieties of innovation and originality that are possible in children’s mysteries.