Another Book Question

[kriadydragon]

I have an original story idea at the top of my writing list, but a part of me is hesitant because it features a child (around eleven years old) befriending a male adult who's around thirty, and I'm a little worried that some might perceive that as creepy.

Has anyone read stories about a little kid befriending an adult? And I don't mean the usual little kid and his/her elderly mentor/teacher/whatever. I mean male adults between the age of twenty-five and thirty-five.

For the record, what I have in mind I feel will work but I think it will help knowing that other authors have ventured into such territory and made it work as well. In other words, I need something that will shut my paranoia up.

Comments

[sholio]

Unfortunately the first examples I came up with -- like Diana Wynne Jones' "Fire and Hemlock" or the "Blade of the Immortal" manga -- end up with a romance eventually developing between the kid and the adult, when the kid is older. Not really what you're going for. *g*

I agree with ga_unicorn, though, that there's nothing inherently inappropriate about it, and lots of real-world examples of adult mentors or close (and healthy!) relationships between kids and their parents' friends.

There's Harry and Molly in Dresden Files. Or Harry and any of Michael's kids, really.

Several of Stephen King's novels are about little boys becoming close friends with adult men -- "Hearts in Atlantis" had a good example of a relationship of this kind, between the little boy protagonist and his elderly neighbor, and there's also Jake and Roland in the Dark Tower series.

"Fly by Night" by Frances Hardinge is a pretty nifty fantasy novel in which an orphan girl of about 11 leaves her village and travels with an adult male con artist, and becomes friends with him.

In Ted Naifeh's "Courtney Crumrin" series, the central relationship is between the little girl protagonist and her uncle (though it might not totally count because they're related?).

One of my favorite novels from my teens, "Rusalka" by CJ Cherryh, is about a twenty-something rascal (rapscallion? skalawag? I can't come up with a term that doesn't sound like it's being used by an elderly schoolteacher *g*) who gets in serious trouble and ends up running away into the wilderness with a teenage orphan boy with magic powers. Adventures ensue, and the two become close friends.

And there's Harry Potter and Sirius Black ...

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this :D I knew there were stories out there but the only ones I could think of were the usual kid with elderly mentor/teacher. And knowing they're out there makes me feel a lot more comfortable with my story idea.