>The King in the Window?

No, I haven't. Even when I was an actual child, I was a cranky old bastard so I never read very many children's books at all outside of the usual suspects. Since I've been an official grownup, I've only read the Harry Potter series and the Lemony Snicket series and one book in what is apparently going to a series by Ann Ursu.

I loved Lemony Snicket, Harry Potter is entertaining enough to keep reading and Ursu is a public Minnesota Twins fan so she's basically incapable of doing anything bad.

>He says the reason he wrote it was that he was completely
>freaked out by the popularity of children's books that
>emphasized intuition over rationality. He was like, no way,
>if you're able to think, you should use that ability to solve
>problems.

Is that really an identifiable trend in children's literature? I don't think I understand what he's talking about.

>Also, Philip Pullman's series is pretty remarkable in part
>because it is frank about moral ambiguity.

Meh. Maybe I'm just being cranky again, but moral ambiguity doesn't seem that out of fashion to me.