It is certainly important and necessary at times to consider children's literature purely as literature. Questions of style, structure, and technical subtlety are as applicable to children's literature as to any of the other branches of literature. Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead … may be considered as an exemplar of the Gothic novel; and one could learn much by comparing the structure of her story with that of Jane Eyre. (p. 77)

Paul Heins, in a speech delivered at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 18, 1969, in his Crosscurrents of Criticism: Horn Book Essays 1968–1977, edited by Paul Heins (copyright © 1977 by The Horn Book, Inc.), Horn Book, 1977.