Boys and Girls Forever: Childrens Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter - Hardcover
Are some of the world's most talented writers of children's books essentially children themselves? In this engaging series of essays, Pulitzer prize-winning author Alison Lurie considers this theory, exploring children's classics from many eras and relating them to the authors who wrote them, including Louisa May Alcott, creator of Little Women, Dr. Seuss and J. K. Rowling. In analysing these and many other authors, Alison Lurie shows how these gifted writers have used children's literature to transfigure sorrow, nostalgia and the struggles of their own experience.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Alison Lurie's books for children include Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales and The Heavenly Zoo. She is the author of a number of much admired adult novels, including The War Between the Tates and Last Resort. Alison Lurie is a winner of the Prix Femina Etranger for The Truth About Lorin Jones and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Foreign Affairs. She divides her time between the USA and London.
From Publishers Weekly:
A perceptive critic, Lurie (Don't Tell the Grown-Ups) has long been a close observer of children's literature. This welcome volume collects a number of her essays on the subject, most of which appeared in other versions in the New York Review of Books. As she wittily deconstructs the lives and works of authors as varied as Louisa May Alcott ("she was the daughter of what would now be described as vegetarian hippie intellectuals, with fringe religious and social beliefs, and spent nearly a year of her childhood in an unsuccessful commune"), Hans Christian Andersen, J.K. Rowling and Dr. Seuss, a common theme emerges, for Lurie contends that those who write best for children are "in some essential way... children themselves." James Barrie liked to play pirates and Indians; Babar author Laurent deBrunhoff climbed trees into his 70s and John Masefield's daughter described him as "a wonderful playmate - essentially, another child." Children's book authors may bristle at this assertion, as well as at Lurie's somewhat offhand dismissal of the art of children's literature. Speaking of "established authors" who try their hand at writing for children, for instance, she notes "they are as it were on vacation, and under no pressure to produce a Great Work." Still, the essays are consistently entertaining, enlightening and erudite, and Lurie's insights into a host of classic titles, including such topics as gender role reversal and social satire in the Oz books, the enduring power of symbolism in fairy tales and changing literary tastes over the past two centuries, bring clarity to an always-evolving form.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherChatto & Windus (U.K.)
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 1422357740
- ISBN 13 9781422357743
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages219
- Rating
(No Available Copies)
Search Books: Create a WantIf you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!
Create a Want