Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony
Every now and then I love to read childrens’ books, especially if they are as well-written and intelligent as Eoin Colfer’s. When I found the first “Artemis Fowl” book two years ago I had just more or less given up on Harry Potter for various reasons and was more than happy to find another world to read about.
Colfer is in his own way just as inventive as J.K. Rowling was in the beginning of the Harry Potter series. He took the old stories about fairies and elfish creatures and gave them a funny new twist. He also introduced a cast of original, interesting and likeable characters. These are definitely books I would read to my children, if I had any. At five years of age the son of my best friend might still be a tad too young to really understand the stories, but I am sorely tempted to get him the first part for his 6th birthday anyway. 
One can not help but love Artemis, even now that he has turned into a good boy. That could easily have become boring, but the adventures Artemis experiences while trying to help Holly and her people – not to forget the demons – are just as exciting as the ones he had while trying to trick them. And Butler, of course, is as adorable as ever.
One thing I especially like about Eoin Colfer is that he actually managed to stay true to his target audience: the fourth installment of the series is just as much a childrens’ book as the first one. Of course, as you can see from my example, it can also be fun for adults to read, but mainly it is targeted at kids. As it should be.
This was actually one of my problems with the later Harry Potter books. HP started out as a childrens’ book, too. And it was brillant and lovely and entertaining. The second and third parts were still true to that intention, but the more successful the books became the more Rowling catered to her adult readers. Which can be seen not only from the fact that all the books were published with adult and childish cover versions (I think they started doing that around the time part 3 came out, right?), but also from the page count. Honestly, how many childrens’ stories do you know that are more than 600 pages long?
Incidentally, even though I love to read really long books, I always found that the last 3 Harry Potter books could have been shortened by 200 pages each without a problem. Not only because of the childrens’ book angle, but because for my taste there were just way too many uninteresting secondary characters and sidelines to the main story that could have been cut out easily. Then again, many people say exactly the same thing about The Lord of the Rings, so that’s clearly a matter of personal opinion.
Now I don’t want to dis Harry Potter in general. After all, I have read them all (am in fact just reading book 7) and generally did like them – otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to slog my way through all those endless pages… It still is a good story, it’s just that the child-like wide-eyed wonder I felt when I read the first book kinda went out of the window with book 4 when all the hype surrounding the books really kicked in in earnest. And I just think that’s a pity, is all.
In a way I envy the people finding the books 100 years from now in some dusty, long-forgotten library. They can read them without knowing about all the crazy marketing stuff that surrounded them when they came out. I imagine they will be able to enjoy them a lot more than I did.
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