There's some things that you wouldn't tackle in a children's book because it would be beyond, not the mental capabilities, but the experience of someone under the age of say ten or eleven to encompass. But that field is smaller than you might think. They can easily cope with death and things like that; they know about it and it's a subject that often preoccupies them.

What is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons?

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

Next comes the realist phase ("After all, from a purely geometrical point of view a cat is only a tube with a door at the top.")

Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them.

They always gives me bath salts," complained Nobby. "And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can't think why, 'cos it's not as if I hardly ever has a bath. You'd think they'd take the hint, wouldn't you?

No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles].