At the beginning of CA³mo molo, the third book in the Manolito Gafotas series by Spanish author Elvira Lindo, the child narrator declares, (Djesde que cuento mi vida tengo muchAsimos mAis amigos de los que nunca hubiera podido imaginar, aunque no haya visto sus caras ni sepa sus nombres (13). ((SJince I've been telling the story of my life I have a lot more friends than I could have ever imagined, even if I haven't seen their faces or know their names.) As the testimony of real readers of many ages shows, the friends he refers to include children, adoles- cents, and adults. The seven novels, although their cov- ers indicate that they are marketed for children twelve to fourteen, have been extraordinarily popular with younger children, older teens, and adults as well, fulfilling the stated aspiration of their creator to write books that all audiences will enjoy (FernAindez-Prieto 36).1 By the year 2000 sales had reached over a million copies, an unprec- edented phenomenon among Spanish books for young people (Mota 5). Ana Maria Rico Martin declares that the first book, eponymously titled Manolito Gafotas, was very successful among children ten to twelve; students in the last year of primary and first year of secondary school liked the book so much that they requested others in the same series for later courses (10). In an article on current children's and adolescent literature in Spain, Eliacer Cansino indicates that the books about Manolito Gafotas are read by adolescents, or young adults, of seventeen (35)} Rico includes these books in the group Juan JosA© Lage FernAindez calls libros de familia (family books) in part because they generate interest among adults, includ- ing parents and educators, as well as among children (Rico 30). William Sherzer declares that the Manolito Gafotas series constituted the entry of children's literature into the realm of popular adult culture (166). What is it about this series that has engaged readers of such diverse age groups? Triple/Triadic Address One approach to answering this question would be to consider the books as a case of what I will call triple address. Here I elaborate on Barbara Wall's theory of ad- dress as presented in The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction. Wall identifies three basic types of ad- dress in children's books: single, double, and dual. She defines double address as that in which the narrator ad- dresses the child narratee overtly and self-consciously