"Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too"

Mahy acknowledges a continuity of craft between her works for toddlers and for teens, suggesting that the playful tools honed for the very young, puns, sound-driven jokes, and gleeful exaggeration, do not get discarded as the subject matter deepens. Instead, they linger like helpful ghosts, shaping tone and texture in narratives that tackle more intricate emotions and ethical tangles. The word “haunt” is deliberate: traces of earlier play persist, not dominating the story but infusing it with buoyancy, reminding readers that language can still be a toy, even when it is also a scalpel.

For young children, wordplay and outsized events are developmental bridges: they spark attention, delight the ear, and model how language can stretch reality. When those strategies reappear in books for older children, they acquire new purposes. A joke can become a pressure valve in a tense scene, or a mischief-laced metaphor that sheds light on grief, loyalty, or identity. Exaggeration morphs into a kind of symbolic spotlight, throwing complex themes into sharper relief; the same comedic swell that once provoked giggles now reveals the absurdity or poignancy of a situation.

There is also an ethical respect embedded here. Mahy treats older readers not as humorless apprentices to adulthood but as people who still carry the elastic curiosity of childhood. The continuity of play recognizes that sophistication and silliness are not opposites. In fact, the agility to pivot between them, to make language sing and sting in the same paragraph, can be a hallmark of literary maturity.

Finally, this approach preserves a signature voice across an author’s body of work. The wit that once built rhythm and trust with beginning readers becomes a subtle instrument for pacing, irony, and emotional counterpoint in later books. The ghosts of early jokes don’t trivialize serious stories; they animate them, keeping wonder alive while the stakes grow larger.