I love children's books. I really do. I've reread Pearl Buck's Tales of the Orient every year since I was eight. I'd buy the blasted thing if I could find it in bookstores.
I read The Velveteen Rabbit last year as well. I've seen the cartoon a dozen times, and I STILL sobbed over the book. I read Neil Gaiman's Coraline today, and the story and the pictures froze my blood. I still love Half Magic by Edward Eager, the E. Nesbit books, Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking novels and fairy tales and folktales (not just those recorded by Perrault or the Grimms or Andersen, but Russian, Chilean, Argentinian, Inuit, Amerindian, Bantu, Zulu, Ugandan, etc., stories as well). I grew up reading myths and legends from every nation.
I still remember some children's books that, I believe, changed me to some extent. for instance, Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are"--a book I did not like as a child, but which fascinated me nonetheless--was the first book I met that told me that adults remembered the fears and injustices and nightmares of childhood. I was eight. Up till then, I had figured that all adults were suffering from a form of collective amnesia. Sendak was the first author who told me that he remembered what it was like to flee from monsters and horrors in your sleep. He was also the first one to tell me that nightmares, no less than fairy-tale dragons, could be overcome.
Having grown up in a house of people who were relentlessly, tediously adult, I think that continuing to read children's literature is an excellent thing to. It gets you away from the pervasive, aggressively cynical, psuedo-sophisticated attitude so prevalent in books for grownups. The best children's books have a sense of wonder and magic that I wish most of the "grownup books" possessed.
I'll leave you with these quotes:
"A book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then." C.S. Lewis
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2003-08-30 08:45 pm (UTC)I read The Velveteen Rabbit last year as well. I've seen the cartoon a dozen times, and I STILL sobbed over the book. I read Neil Gaiman's Coraline today, and the story and the pictures froze my blood. I still love Half Magic by Edward Eager, the E. Nesbit books, Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking novels and fairy tales and folktales (not just those recorded by Perrault or the Grimms or Andersen, but Russian, Chilean, Argentinian, Inuit, Amerindian, Bantu, Zulu, Ugandan, etc., stories as well). I grew up reading myths and legends from every nation.
I still remember some children's books that, I believe, changed me to some extent. for instance, Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are"--a book I did not like as a child, but which fascinated me nonetheless--was the first book I met that told me that adults remembered the fears and injustices and nightmares of childhood. I was eight. Up till then, I had figured that all adults were suffering from a form of collective amnesia. Sendak was the first author who told me that he remembered what it was like to flee from monsters and horrors in your sleep. He was also the first one to tell me that nightmares, no less than fairy-tale dragons, could be overcome.
Having grown up in a house of people who were relentlessly, tediously adult, I think that continuing to read children's literature is an excellent thing to. It gets you away from the pervasive, aggressively cynical, psuedo-sophisticated attitude so prevalent in books for grownups. The best children's books have a sense of wonder and magic that I wish most of the "grownup books" possessed.
I'll leave you with these quotes:
"A book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then." C.S. Lewis
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl