anyway the reason I was thinking about Krapivin is because his books are for children and about children - protagonists and target audience from preschool to older teens, centering around the tween age
and they are very good
and they always, with very few particularly fairy tale exceptions, feature Bad Things That Happen To Children. like... in the real world. like a lot of them have supernatural elements but there are plenty that just straight up have none and these books talk about
- bullying
- abusive school staff
- abusive parents and stepparents
- illness and death
- being caught in a war zone
- disability and chronic illness
- poverty
- the fear of living in a totalitarian state
- random abusive authorities
- not having agency in your own life
- any and all of the above happening to your parents, neighbours, friends, siblings
when the supernatural elements show up, they tend to give the kids MORE agency than the mundane world does. maybe there are monsters, but the kids can actually fight them (which presents a nice difference from -). maybe there are dangers, but the kids can actually actively do something about them. theres actually a unique 'real world' danger that shows up in the supernatural stories - government experimentation - but its still usually because the kids CAN do something.
Some of the books have adult protagonists who just interact with children (generally to have their life changed by them) (generally its a middle-aged writer having a midlife crisis, Krapivin doesn't bother obscuring shit, the kids are the real main characters anyway)
(...and when I say kids, it's usually boys. There are girls too, but they tend to be secondary characters. I can only think of one book right off the bat that straight up has a girl as the main POV protagonist. Still, it does exist and it's actually damn good. It's a personal experience bias, not downright bigotry)
these books are fucking terrifying. they are very much about what it's like to be a very small person in a big world full of people most of whom don't give a shit about you. it's about what it's like when adults get mad at you for correcting them when they make a mistake. it's about what it's like when your parents are not around because they're too busy taking care of you by earning money for you to live on. it's about what it's like when everyone thinks your preferences and relationships and attachments don't matter. (but it's not everyone. it's never really everyone)
and these books are also really good at portraying, just... life in the soviet union and in post-soviet russia. from the point of view of children growing up in the middle of it, and from the point of view of the occasional adult who is trying to stay kind and keep their integrity while assaulted by all of that on all sides. i think they are mandatory reading for all self-proclaimed tumblr communists. go learn russian just for them and then read them and then come back with your brilliant ideas and then ill talk to you