Volume 19, Number 10 · December 14, 1972
Good Children's Books!
By Alison Lurie
SOME GOOD BOOKS
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Joseph Schindelman
Knopf, 164 pp., $3.95
The Tenth Life of Osiris Oaks
by Wally Cox, by Everett Greenbaum, illustrated by F.A. Fitzgerald
Simon & Schuster, 125 pp., $4.95
The Little Broomstick
by Mary Stewart, illustrated by Shirley Hughes
Morrow, 192 pp., $4.95
A Castle of Bone
by Penelope Farmer
Atheneum, 160 pp., $4.25
The House of Wings
by Betsy Byars, illustrated by Daniel Schwartz
Viking, 142 pp., $4.95
No Way of Telling
by Emma Smith
Atheneum, 256 pp., $4.95
Goldengrove
by Jill Paton Walsh
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 130 pp., $4.50
Friday and Robinson
by Michel Tournier, illustrated by David Stone Martin
Knopf, 120 pp., $4.95
Once Upon a Time, the Fairy Tale World of Arthur Rackham
edited by Margery Darrell
Viking, 296 pp., $14.95
The Light Princess
by George MacDonald, illustrated by Maurice Sendak
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 110 pp., $3.95
The Golden Key
by George MacDonald, illustrated by Maurice Sendak
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 86 pp., $3.95
The oldest conscious tradition in juvenile literature is the didactic. For over two hundred years, with varying skill, authors have labored at what in the eighteenth century was called 'cheating children into learning.' This might be done directly, by giving facts a chocolate coating of pictures, jokes, and verse; or indirectly through imaginary biographies like John Newbery's famous tale of Goody Two-Shoes (1765), in which the eponymous heroine escapes from a rural slum by attending diligently to her studies, and finally achieves worldly success as an elementary-school principal.
Review, 2249 words
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