Boys and Girls Forever: Children's Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter

I was very impressed with Ms. Lurie's previous book, Don't Tell the Grownups, because she recognized and applauded the inherent subversion of great children's literature. I would have chucked any book that the anti-Harry Potter forces liked, with namby-pamby characters who ALWAYS followed the rules - straight into the donation bin - only because I NEVER throw books in the garbage. This book picks up on the same theme, showing that books such as Little Women, which are considered "sweet and sentimental" today, were actually quite radical for the time they were written. She also looks at the lives of the authors and the influences on them. I certainly never realized that L. Frank Baum's wife and mother-in-law were outspoken feminists, which probably explains the presence of so many strong female characters in his work, sometimes to the detriment of the males. The book also has chapters on a few authors with whom I have no acquaintance but whose work I might be interested in checking out someday, as well as several interesting essays on subjects such as playground lore, illustrators of children's books, and poetry by and for children.

I just finished this, and loved it, loved it, loved it! Alison Lurie, besides being a great novelist, teaches Children's Literature at Cornell. This book "deconstructs" classics such as Little Women, The Wizard of Oz, Charlotte's Web, etc, with such acute observations that it was a great joy to read. Of course the book talks about Harry Potter and the criticism it has received from certain religious circles. This is not new in children's lit: The Wizard of Oz suffered the same kind of stigma. It was interesting to read how nothing is new in the realm of religious intolerance. One of the chapters about which i was most conflicted was the one dealing with illustrations. Lurie acknowledges that it would be disingenous to expect fairy tales without pictures. However, images steal away from the imagination development that kids would enjoy otherwise. I read a fairytale a million years ago, where the princesses wore dresses "the color of time". I vividly remember the internal debate i had in my head trying to decide what color time would be (i settled on pearl grey). Pictures would not have given me that mental gymnastics. In a sense, i believe that fantasy is like gymnastics for the mind of a little one. Reality is what you see every day. Fantasy is what you need to come to terms as you grow up. To carry on a mental fight trying to reconcile what is real and what is fiction is a valuable exercise for a developing mind. And besides, adults are always available for "reality checks".