In the middle of the holiday book-buying season, it seems that just about everyone is weighing in on kidlit. On the CBC website, Rachel Giese traces its trajectory from the 1970s and ’80s, when realist writers like Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton scored hits, to the current era, in which the success of J.K. Rowling has ushered in the popularity of YA fantasy novels.
But with just one book left in the Harry Potter series and sales of Rowling’s books starting to wane, publishers are looking for the next big kidlit success. Giese says a likely contender is Kenneth Oppel, whose books reguarly appear on the Q&Q’s bestseller lists, and she feeds the flames of fandom with a conversation with the author that touches on everything from Oppel’s affection for the bygone eras he portrays in his books to an adolescent passion for video games from which he emerged, with the help of Roald Dahl, into a prolific writing career.
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