A must for children’s literature professionals and aficionados.
The celebrated children’s book author and illustrator reflects on writing and reading children’s literature from her long, unique perspective.
During her successful career, Babbitt (The Devil’s Storybooks, 2012, etc.), who died in 2016, earned a Newbery Honor Medal and the E.B. White Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. This compilation of 18 chronologically arranged speeches and articles spans the years between 1970 and 2004. During this time, she describes herself as a “little dog” barking with the “big dogs” of the adult literary world who routinely relegate children’s literature to a lesser status. Babbitt suggests that the “tangible difference” between adult and children’s literature resides in the latter’s “Happy Ending,” and she refutes the “widespread American belief that children are irrelevant.” Writing in 1973, she condemns American children’s novels as “patently artificial” and “sweet beyond bearing,” urging writers to reflect on what we have “in common with the rest of the world.” She visits and revisits the universal pattern of what Joseph Campbell called the “separation, adventure, and return” path common in children’s fantasy (including her own). A children’s story “doesn’t deny the dark; it simply reaffirms the light.” Wary of those who would use children’s fiction to teach social responsibility, Babbitt adamantly asserts that the purpose of reading stories is to give children pleasure. Aware of her own aging, she peppers her later essays with amusing autobiographical anecdotes, recalled vividly and fondly. Writing with passion and insight, the author’s voice remains direct, incisive, witty, and true as she draws widely from the canon of children’s and adult literature. While some of her observations may be dated, most remain relevant as she astutely holds fast to the importance of giving children honest, hopeful, and entertaining stories in a changing world.
A must for children’s literature professionals and aficionados.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-31040-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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