| But JD, I think we muddy things up considerably by comparing apples and oranges here. Shakespeare was a great poet and a great dramatist, but he wasn't much of a novelist, was he? How do you compare a Dickens novel with a Shakespeare play, except to say that each is a superior example of its kind?
Lovecraft, Poe, not many novels or plays there. Dickens wrote plays, novels, and short stories, but who would be reading him today if it weren't for the novels?
A work can be great without the complexity of, say, a Tolstoy or a Dickens. Darn it, Dickens could produce a work of greatness without the complexity of most of his novels! There is little complexity in A Christmas Carol. And a children's book can be a great work of fiction, if it does more than simply entertain, if it shines a light on some aspect of human life or human potential, if it gives a child something of value they can take away with them. |