At a recent publisher's cocktail party, the literary director Jaakko Tapaninen suggested that a group photograph should be taken of a few writers of the younger generation. But why? Had a new literary rebellion developed, at a time when everyone yawns when they hear the word manifesto?      Of the writers, one has published short prose reminiscent of the work of Raymond Carver, dirty realism about losers. Another, stormy prose about men's work. A third, beautiful poetry praising the constellations and Helsinki's suburbs. A fourth, alienated, cubist novels and a few difficult collections of poetry.      I could continue the catalogue and fail to find any common poetic features. Except one: each of them has, in recent years, published a children's book.      The writers have taken the dangerous step into children's literature just at the moment when they were beginning to be taken seriously. Children's literature, after all, cares nothing for broad views of social change, and does not arrange glass-bead games of linguistic philosophy for intellectuals to sove.      Where does this sudden lack of ambition come from? Why abandon the search for cultural capital and content oneself with speaking to half-animals? No sociological field study has been made of the phenomenon, so it is necessary to invent the answers for oneself. How would a pipe-smoking sociology professor of the older generation, sitting in his study behind enormous piles of paper, interpret the train of thought of the writers in the group photograph?      'They have,' he would say, 'reached the age when they have children of their own.'      A young student sitting in the lecture hall, however, has read small-circulation cultural magazines, and is particularly interested in questions of identity. He would see the matter in a different way. 'The writer's identity has opened up in recent years. Novelists, poets and journalists are no longer separate categories – there are merely professional writers who love the written word, whether or not it appears between covers.'      What about a middle-aged woman psychologist? What would she say – she is, after all, concerned about the decline of the family, the abandoning of communal mealtimes and the neglect of children. She would detect a counter-reaction. 'Many thirtysomethings are in second marriages, but are committed to parenting. They seek contact with their children and build a shared world. I believe that the writers are on the same track.'      It would perhaps be far-fetched to claim that the writers in the group photograph are concerned about the decline of the nation. But there is certainly cause for concern.      Last autumn's national school matriculation examinations showed a collapse in Finnish-language skills. The guilty party was immediately identified: computers, which steal time from the habit of reading.      Someone commented that if people do not have an adequate knowledge of their mother tongue, it follows that they cannot think, either. They will become the apes of the information society. Not its makers.      Jyrki Kiiskinen      Editor-in-chief Top of page