Reading Time: 1 Min.
I’ve noticed that a striking number of the best children’s books have been written by people who had no children: Margaret Wise Brown ( Goodnight Moon ). H. A. and Margret Rey ( Curious George ). Maurice Sendak. Dr. Seuss. I have a theory as to why. If you don’t have kids, you can only really experience the book from the child’s point of view. Parents can’t help but have all kinds of agendas when they read a book to their child. And who can blame them? As long as the child is a captive audience, why not teach them about something? Like patience, or the alphabet, or Who Simone Biles Is? The best children’s books teach none of that. They aren’t advertisements for anything—not even the important things. They’re an advertisement for reading itself; for the entertainment value of the world itself. Consider Curious George . The first book in the series is a full-scale assault on the senses of young children with a relentless barrage of every thrilling and dangerous thing that primally fascinates them. On successive pages in a single book, George is kidnapped (from a jungle); goes on a boat; calls 911; gets a visit from the entire fire department; then is arrested by the police for placing the call; goes to jail; then escapes jail—by flying high above the city, carried by a bunch of balloons. These things happen in the same book, in a row. It is hard to imagine a responsible parent dreaming up such a sequence at bedtime, let alone a sequel ( Curious George Takes a Job ) in which George explores a hospital unsupervised and passes out in bliss from inhaling ether. Children’s books are not for teaching or moralizing or philosophizing. (That’s what articles about children’s books are for!) At the top of this particular list of children’s authors is Esphyr Slobodkina (1908–2002). Slobodkina was an acclaimed modern artist in the early twentieth century turned illustrator of multiple children’s books, including several books by Margaret Wise Brown. Caps for Sale (1940) is her masterpiece. In Caps for Sale […]
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Reading Time: 1 Min. Fantasy and science fiction readers are naturally open to the unexpected, and they like new takes
Reading Time: 1 Min. The first thing that strikes you about Mia Farrow in Jen Silverman’s “The Roommate,” now at
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