5 Published Novels Written by People Too Young to Vote

The Young Visitors, by Daisy Ashford
Age: 9
Lots of kids write stories when they’re very young, and those stories are generally made 50 times more entertaining by the alchemical combination of adorably terrible spelling and grammar and adorably innocent concepts of adult relationships (not to mention the ability of loving parents and tolerant friends of the family to see genius where none exists). Daisy Ashford wrote this surprisingly complex and deeply conceived comic novel when she was just nine years old; when she rediscovered the notebook in her late 30s, she showed it around, and the book was published in 1919, preserving her spelling and other mistakes. The world was charmed and the book was a huge hit. Although she published a few more stories the next year, she’d stopped writing long before, and never wrote seriously again.

The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
Age: 16
Hinton is possibly the most celebrated of child authors. The Outsiders was begun when she was 15, completed when she was 16, and published when she was 18. Inspired in part by her own observations of gangs at her high school in Tulsa, it remains a must-read for every generation, and the young Hinton’s ability to get inside the heads of her teen characters still startles and amazes. She had to teach herself how to type in order to write the book, because she couldn’t read her own handwriting, and has said she wrote it because she’d been dreaming for years of a book she’d actually want to read—there’s a wealth of incredible writing wisdom in that one statement.

Eragon, by Christopher Paolini
Age: 16
It’s almost impossible to believe Paolini is now 32 years old. Although he was 20 when Eragon was officially published, he wrote the book at age 16, his family self-published it a year later, and Paolini famously went on a tour of schools to promote the epic fantasy, which was eventually adapted into a film and spawned the uber-successful Inheritance Cycle series. Paolini is now recognized as the youngest author of a bestselling series of books, as opposed to a one-off, and his story makes everyone wish they had such supportive parents (and raw talent). Paolini hasn’t published a novel since 2011, but is working on a science fiction book and has further plans for another entry in the Inheritance Cycle.

The Neon Bible, by John Kennedy Toole
Age: 16
The tragic story of John Kennedy Toole, Pulitzer winner for A Conspiracy of Dunces, published after his suicide, is well-known. Toole was troubled all his life, and after Dunces was rejected despite several attempts at revision, he ended his life at the age of 31. Fifteen years before, he’d written his first novel, The Neon Bible, but filed it away, dismissing it as juvenile. Before Dunces became a sensation, Toole’s mother convinced the rest of the family—which would have shared in the profits under Louisiana’s, er, interesting inheritance laws—to give up their rights to it, to which they agreed, as no one expected it to be a hit. After Dunces became a huge success, the family refused to lose their rights to The Neon Bible, and pressured Mrs. Toole to publish it—but she refused, going so far as to leave instructions in her will that it never be published if the family would benefit from it. Lawsuits, however, overcame that obstacle, and the book was released in 1989, 30 years after Toole’s suicide, to generally admiring reviews.

The House Without Windows, by Barbara Nelson Follett
Age: 12
Follett was the home-schooled daughter of a noted literary critic and editor. She wrote The House without Windows in 1927, when she was 12, and with her father’s help, the book was published to some acclaim. She quickly followed it with The Voyage of the Norman D in 1928, which was similarly well-received. Her father, to whom Follett was very close, left her mother that year for another woman—and Follett never fully recovered from the trauma. She did write several more manuscripts that were never published, but the family fell on financial hardship and she had to take work as a secretary. She married at age 19; five years later, suspecting her husband was cheating on her, she walked out of their house with some cash in her pocket and was never seen again. Her mother came to suspect the husband of foul play, but there was no evidence to support the claim. From a bestselling child prodigy to a mysterious disappearance in just 12 years, Follett remains a fascinating literary tragedy.