A Child's Delight

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Perrin provides a series of essays on "great" (but not well-known) children's books. I really enjoyed reading his insights (I turned first to the essays on books I knew and loved as a child, as I would suspect most readers would) but later read the rest of the essays. It's clear that Perrin loves literature, and loves reading to children. I was especially taken by his discussion of Margery Sharp's books about Miss Bianca (the source material for the Disney Rescuers movies, but the books are far better than the movies). He points out how Sharp included little parodies of Regency novels in her writing - how she made her writing complex beyond what a child would notice (i.e., the child would not say "Oh, she's parodying Thackerey here"). The general thread that runs through the essays is that *good* children's writers do not write down to children, they write "across" to them, and include enough complexity of plot or language or syntax that the child is not patronized (and in fact, can go back and reread the books as an adult and not say "What did I ever see in that??" This book would be a wonderful gift for new parents.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Perrin provides a series of essays on "great" (but not well-known) children's books. I really enjoyed reading his insights (I turned first to the essays on books I knew and loved as a child, as I would suspect most readers would) but later read the rest of the essays. It's clear that Perrin loves literature, and loves reading to children. I was especially taken by his discussion of Margery Sharp's books about Miss Bianca (the source material for the Disney Rescuers movies, but the books are far better than the movies). He points out how Sharp included little parodies of Regency novels in her writing - how she made her writing complex beyond what a child would notice (i.e., the child would not say "Oh, she's parodying Thackerey here"). The general thread that runs through the essays is that *good* children's writers do not write down to children, they write "across" to them, and include enough complexity of plot or language or syntax that the child is not patronized (and in fact, can go back and reread the books as an adult and not say "What did I ever see in that??" This book would be a wonderful gift for new parents.