Critics Sandra Beckett and David Galef have identified an increase in the number of authors who crosswrite or write for a dual-audience, producing both children's and adults' literature (Beckett 1999: xi; Galef 1995: 34). This crossover can occur, Galef points out, in different directions. Authors of adult fiction may decide to take up children's literature in the middle of or late in their careers, Roald Dahl being a famous example. Conversely, authors of children's fiction may turn to writing for an older audience, which is rarer. A third type is comprised of 'polygraph[ic]' writers such as A. A. Milne or Louisa May Alcott who managed to produce both kinds of texts from the beginning of their careers (Galef 1995: 29). It is true, however, that the number of authors who are able to succeed in both genres is more limited. Whether Toni Morrison will join the canon of children's literature remains to be seen, but the truth is that after the publication of Paradise (1998) she has put out a substantial number of books addressed to younger audiences. These comprise two picture books, The Big Box (1999) and The Book of Mean People (2002), a series of retellings of Aesop in comic strip format under the title Who's Got Game (2003) and a pictorial book titled Remember: The Journey to School Integration (2004). As much children's literature is a collaborative effort, Morrison has worked alongside book illustrators Giselle Potter and Pascal Lemaitre, as well as her son Slade Morrison, a painter by profession, in the first three pieces. The extent of Slade Morrison's collaboration in the texts is difficult to determine. Morrison has admittedly used the stories that he imagined as a child as a source of inspiration for the two picture books (Capriccioso 2003) and they have devised the revisions of Aesop together ('Scribner Signs Six Book Deal With Toni Morrison and Son'). Morrison, who has admitted to having "a twinge of envy for novelists who write for all ages" ('Scribner Signs Six Book Deal With Toni Morrison and Son') is likely to be fulfilling a desire to target children directly as an audience, after showing a longstanding concern for them. In a 1981 interview by Charles Ruas, Morrison expressed her preoccupation with children as follows: "Certainly since Sula I have thought that the children are in real danger. Nobody likes them, all children, but particularly black children.... Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth. There may be a lot of scorned people, but particularly children" (Ruas 1992: 103). Although the theme of childhood is not at the center of all her works, Morrison has often deployed the child archetype, to borrow Rocio Davis's terms, to respond to her country's "evolving socio-cultural climate" (2001: 12). The child-characters in her fiction are portrayed as the innocent victims of their families, communities and their nation. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove is driven insane by the pervasive power of the white ideal of beauty and the lack of a loving family. While dismembering the normative narrative of the Dick and Jane primer throughout the novel, Morrison puts under scrutiny notions of childhood innocence and complacent American family life. She draws our attention to the way children's behavior and personalities are shaped by their environment. Instilled prejudice leads some of her characters, such as Maureen Peal or Junior, to oppress other children. Junior, whose mother, Geraldine, "had explained to him the difference between colored people and n*****s" (1994: 87), harasses Pecola in the "SEETHECAT" section of The Bluest Eye. Sula and Nel are bullied by a group of Irish immigrant boys in Sula. The narrator reveals that the bullying stems from the need of the newly arrived Irish immigrants to integrate in the white community by "echo[ing]" (1982: 53) its bias against blacks. In addition, Morrison is concerned with how children are affected by a society obsessed with success and dr
