Parenting & Family Quote by Margaret Haddix

There’s a quiet power move in Haddix’s modest phrasing: “I like the fact” sounds casual, but it frames imagination as a partnership, not a performance. She’s not boasting about inventing “strange tales” so much as praising the audience that consents to them. That consent matters. Children, in her telling, aren’t blank slates to be lectured at; they’re co-conspirators who decide, moment by moment, whether a story deserves their belief.

The line also sneaks in a defense of weirdness. “Strange” is often coded as risky in children’s literature: too dark, too complex, too unreal. Haddix treats it as an invitation. The subtext is a rebuke to gatekeepers who assume kids need stories sanded down into safe morals and predictable arcs. Kids will “go along” if the storyteller earns it, which puts the ethical burden on craft: clarity, momentum, emotional truth. Not realism.

Contextually, this fits Haddix’s lane. Her books frequently pivot on big speculative premises (hidden histories, altered timelines, children confronting systems larger than themselves) that demand reader buy-in. She’s acknowledging that her genre lives or dies on trust. The intent isn’t to romanticize childhood innocence; it’s to recognize a sharp, underappreciated literacy. Kids can handle strangeness because they’re already experts at navigating worlds where rules shift fast and authority doesn’t always make sense. Her best compliment to young readers is that they’re willing, not gullible.