Richard Locke at the Brooklyn Book Festival

Richard Locke, author of the just-published Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels, will be moderating what sounds like will be a great panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival at 10:00 A.M.:

Kids on the Skids

Kevin Holohan (The Brother’s Lot), Tayari Jones (Silver Sparrow), Justin Torres (We the Animals). Using child protagonists as a lens for a larger cultural narrative, these three novelists explore the dynamics of family and community and the isolation that can come from maturation at any age. Short readings and discussion moderated by Richard Locke (Critical Children).

The panel of course fits perfectly with Locke’s Critical Children, which explore ten novels that portray children so vividly that their names are instantly recognizable. Richard Locke traces the 130-year evolution of these iconic child characters, moving from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; from Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to Peter Pan and his modern American descendant, Holden Caulfield; and finally to Lolita and Alexander Portnoy.