Although Garner is often classified as a fantasy writer for young audiences, his work has undergone an evolution over the years that exceeds the limitations of any one genre. It can more accurately be said that he is an author fascinated by time and place and the history and folklore that go with them, an author who, as he himself said, as quoted in Frank Eyre's British Children's Books in the Twentieth Century, only "uses fantasy as crutch." This is not to say Garner takes the easy way out--far from it. With each book he has demanded more from his readers, so that, by the time he wrote Red Shift, critics were questioning whether or not he should still be classified as a children's writer. "I write for myself and for no other audience," Garner declared in Speaking for Ourselves: Autobiographical Sketches by Notable Authors of Books for Young Adults. "Yet, for some reason that I do not understand, I am read with far greater passion, intelligence, and commitment by young people than by adults. Is that strange""
A Sense of Time and Place
Garner credits his long childhood illness as being the inspiration for his view of time, which permeates so much of his work.
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