You know what’s fascinating? The concept of a, “children’s novel.” Seriously, what defines one other than the fact that the main characters have to be children? It seems like you can have everything short of global genocide in a children's book, as long as the protagonists are young and sprightly. I don’t like genre-labeling however, because labels tend to be for soup. I don’t like genocide either, but I hope that part was implied.

I do, however, enjoy a great deal of children’s literature that seems to alienate adult readers because of its moniker. The whole “children’s novel” stigma seems to alienate a lot of adult readers from some spectacular fiction. As a remedy, meet Neal Shusterman, a writer of children’s fiction who’s amusingly impossible to label. Some would call his work horror, while others would call it fantasy, and many would be hard-pressed to call it anything but – well –good. While I haven’t continually read most of the authors I enjoyed in middle school, Shusterman is the rare exception. This man is a storytelling badass and has probably the most imaginative mind I’ve ever come across.

When I was in middle school, I remember putting down books of his like Full Tilt and Shadow Club and feeling like I’d been spellbound around a campfire. His novels tug on different strands of your brain and just make you step back and ask, “How the hell did somebody come up with that?” Shusterman takes really fundamental emotional concepts (ex. overcoming your fears, moving on into the unknown, etc) and presents them in ways to young readers that are refreshing and innovative.

Case and point: The Skinjacker Trilogy.

Here’s the gist of it: the story starts with two teenagers, Nick and Allie, who are both killed in a head-on collision. Instead of getting to “where they were going,” their souls end up stuck in this limbo between reality and the afterlife called Everlost. The rest of the world is still present around them, but they’re unable to touch it or communicate. If they stop moving, they sink to the center of the Earth. The mechanics of Shusterman’s world would take ten articles to do them justice, but his efforts in making his realm believable are impeccable. A lot of the time, fantasy novels follow logic that only pertains to the imaginary world itself. In Shusterman’s writing, every physical law in Everlost finds a way to make link back to solid ground in our own world, reflecting on our superstitions about death and the afterlife.

It’s hard to detail what happens over the course of all three volumes, but essentially, there’s another character who goes mad with power and sees Everlost as divine, who wants to trap as many souls there as possible and replace the real world with Everlost. Shusterman raises a lot of questions here - is it worth having a perfect world if nothing in it ever changes? Do good and evil really exist if everyone is just serving their own vendetta and convinced that they’re right? And obviously, given the subject matter – what really happens when we die? Interestingly enough, and tastefully over the course of three books, Shusterman never offers a clear answer.

The story relies heavily on atmosphere. The reader feels themselves gliding through the gray, washed-out skies with the occasional shimmer of objects and monuments that have secured a place in eternity after being destroyed in reality. Everlost is an unearthly place, but there’s an alluring sense of wonder waiting for those with the guts to search. The characterization is kind of skimpy in the first book, but it picks up as the characters get more acquainted with the world they’ve been thrown into. The story’s villain is especially interesting as a quasi-terrorist of sorts, entirely convinced she’s doing the noble thing by wiping out humanity. While the trilogy does slow down a bit near the beginning of the third book, and I was a bit concerned with the direction at times, I was pleased with how everything wrapped up. Given the circumstances, it couldn’t have been with a ribbon.

The thing that irks me is that you’ll find these books labeled everywhere as a children’s novel. Understandable? Sure, but I’m kind of dismayed with how that seems to turn away. The Skinjacker Trilogy is easily the most well-crafted story I’ve ever read on the subject of life and death, surmounting numerous novels that were intended solely for adults. Children will love this trilogy, no doubt about it. The thing is that adults would love it as well, if only it popped into their view more.

Does everything with a child mentioned in the synopsis have to be limited to middle school book fairs? Can a book branch two genres at once without being christened as a children's novel? Maybe we should treat children's novels with even more reverence than "adult fiction." After all, if there's any better time to take on the world, to experience it without any bias whatsoever, it's when you're a kid. To the authors still able to write after that bias kicks in, thank you.

You deserve a medal for it.