[giantg2]

Most of my childhood books were rural based adventures. The books my kid has are mostly rural or have no setting at all.

I agree that stories involving houses tend to portray single family homes. I can't think of any that actually portray that house in a suburban setting (the premise of the article). I'm sure they are out there, but none come to mind for me.

Then the question is really, so what if the settings are not suburban? I didn't really see an answer to that in the article, so I guess they were just trying to point out that there may be fewer topics for childhood adventures set in suburban areas.

[SpicyLemonZest]

My favorite children's book growing up (the embarrassingly named Captain Underpants) was definitively suburban.

More generally, I guess I'd question what it means to portray a house as suburban. The author seems to be assuming that anywhere with cool nature stuff in walking distance is rural, and that's not true; my definitively suburban house growing up was within easy walking distance of a pretty well-forested park on one side and a creek on the other.

[mcphage]

That was also my biggest problem with this article. Take Calvin and Hobbes—definitely Calvin lives in a suburban environment, but he also has plenty of nature nearby. Would the author consider this rural then? I don’t know, but I don’t think it was.