Volume 37, Number 7 · April 26, 1990
Unchildish Activities
By Janet Adam Smith
Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Literature
by Alison Lurie
Little, Brown, 229 pp., $19.95
'Somebody's been putting ideas into your head'—there, down the ages, is the voice of authority, in the form of parent, nanny, teacher, when faced with questions that threaten received ideas and their privilege of 'Allow me to know best.' That they have been busily putting ideas into children's heads—ideas of behavior, morality, and the status quo—is quite another story. E. Nesbit hit off the type in her invention (in 'The Cockatoucan') of the nurse-maid transformed into the Automatic Nagging Machine, which ejects little rolls of paper carrying messages like 'Don't be tiresome.'
Review, 1598 words
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