Parenting & Family Quote by Norman Macleod

Macleod’s line reads less like a craft tip and more like a warning label: children’s literature is policed by an assumption of simplicity. The blunt “cannot” is doing the heavy lifting. It’s not merely describing a format constraint; it’s staking out a boundary on what we’re allowed to imagine kids can handle, and what writers are expected to deliver. Even the phrase “spin out” carries a faintly contemptuous note, as if length and intricacy are indulgences - pleasures reserved for “serious” books and “serious” readers.

The intent is practical on the surface: children’s books are short, paced, and built for attention spans, read-aloud rhythms, and limited page counts. But the subtext suggests a culture that equates clarity with shallowness. “Complex character development” becomes the forbidden luxury, implying that childhood is a pre-literary state where interiority is optional. That’s a revealing tell, because many enduring children’s books succeed by smuggling depth into tight spaces: a few sharp scenes, an image that sticks, a moral tension you can feel even if you can’t yet name it.

Context matters here. Macleod, writing in a tradition that often treated children’s reading as instruction and social shaping, is echoing an older paternalism: keep the story straight, keep the lesson legible, don’t let the narrative wander. The line ends up exposing the adult anxiety underneath children’s publishing - not that kids won’t follow complexity, but that complexity might slip past the gatekeepers and do something unpredictable.