Fantasy with Friends: Tropes in Children’s Fantasy

Happy Monday! Time for Fantasy with Friends: all the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about tropes in children’s fantasy: Is there a common trope or concept you see in children’s fantasy stories that you think would be fun to see more of in adult fantasy? I don’t actually read children’s fantasy or YA these days — at least not very often, except maaaaaybe a bit in graphic novel form — so I’m a little bit stumped here. If I think back to the tropes and concepts I loved in fantasy when I was a kid, I think a lot of it is being done in adult fantasy: I think fondly about stuff like The Worst Witch in the School, but then we have Emily Tesh playing around with a magic school in The Incandescent, and Caitlin Rozakis doing younger kids in a magic school in The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, for instance. Maybe I’d love a bit less dark academia and more “holy crap I’m attending a magical school/university”? As for…