Fountain of Knowledge

I can't talk like a kid. Even when I was a kid, I couldn't talk like a kid. Used to make my parents laugh at me at the oddest times, when I thought I was being totally serious. Of course, I pronounced nothing correctly--learned all my big words from books, brought them out into conversation without thinking about it, and butchered them. Still avoid saying "debacle" because I really want to pronounce it "deb-ah-kell", and can never remember if that's wrong or if "de-bock-all" is wrong. Bleah.

Anyway.

Simpler language is appropriate, I think, but how do you explain people like Nesbit and Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh) and even the Narnia books, where the language is more advanced than what we consider kid language these days? Were kids back in the day just better educated, or did it just not occur to children's authors to simplify more than they already were? (I know that the Narnia books are written more simply than, say, Lewis's Perlandra books. But he doesn't balk at the occasional semicolon or description of someone being boiled in oil, either.)

I guess, is there a line between having an appropriate voice for your audience, and challenging them a teeny bit to understand more language? And if I can't write a kid's story to save my life, should I even be asking questions? :P

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