In his second volume, which carries on with modern writers of a span of 25 years, years which he calls the richest periods of detective fiction, and one he calls the new style where detectives are more natural, more plausible, and more closely related to real life , he concentrates on stories that are bona fide detective stories. Each story has a central character who is an outstanding fictional sleuth. He attributes the trend toward a naturalistic detective to Edmund Clerihow Bentley and his novel, Trent s Last Case . Haycraft adds that this novel has been credited with changing the whole course of the detective story. His hero, the engaging amateur detective who is an artist and journalist by profession Philip Trent, is one with whom many young readers could relate.
Children identify with children they read about.
This idea is stated well by Wallace Hildick in his book, Children and Fiction . This is where the aspect of the power of a work of fiction is said to take us out of ourselves . He feels strongly that in helping children to begin writing, a teacher s aim should be to, in his words, derive the stimulating and strengthening of the speculative imagination and therefore of the individual s capacity for human sympathy . Virginia Hamilton, an award winning author of children s books does this well in her stor y, The House of Dies Drear . Her hero, Thomas, is a thirteen year old black boy moving from the South to a town in Ohio, to a house which had ties in the past to the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves.