Volume 50, Number 5 · March 27, 2003
Not Just for Children
By John Bayley
Boys and Girls Forever: Children's Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter
by Alison Lurie
Penguin, 219 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Children at the moment are made far too much of by the press, television, and movies: childish characters are beginning to invade the adult world of the TV thriller, sentimentalizing its stark effects or being clever beyond their years. When I was a child I disliked children's books, or thought I did. My mother tolerated this attitude, and sometimes allowed me to take out an adult novel when she changed her own book at the circulating library of those days. I pretended to enjoy these novels—I still remember one called Return I Dare Not, which sounded promising—but in fact I found them silly, boring, or incomprehensible. Then I discovered Kipling, who doesn't fit into any category, and I enjoyed, as I still do, every book and story that he ever wrote. I enjoyed in the same spirit the novels of Kipling's friends Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson. None of these seemed to be about children, or for them.
Review, 2049 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |