A celebratory anthology of children’s literature, from classics to innovators.
Wild things tamed.
Children’s literature has been around for as long as there have been children. Myths and memories filled nursery and classroom. Adventure and fantasy tantalized young minds. For English-language readers, the “golden age” of children’s literature remains the period from the early 19th through the mid-20th century: from fairy tales to Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Frances Hodgson Burnett, A.A. Milne, and C.S. Lewis. More modern writers take their inspiration from the past, and many works of children’s literature today hark back to an imagined Dickensian past (Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket) or a premodern landscape (Diana Wynne Jones, Philip Pullman). This guide to children’s classics, together with a selection of recent writers, has enough in it to fill a canon for a classroom and a bookshelf near a child’s bed. After a brief introduction, each section offers capsule author biographies, rich illustrations, and deeply felt appreciations for the magic of storytelling. New to many young readers (and their parents and teachers) will be writers such as Shaun Tan, Juan Villoro, Sachiko Kashiwaba, and R.J. Palacio. The globalism of the selection may seem, to skeptics, diverse and inclusive for its own sake. Familiar names are also here, even those whose reputations have suffered in recent years (J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl). There’s little room for darkness (the biographical sketch of Dahl does some major whitewashing—“a wonderfully entertaining writer”; “a devoted father”). The great joy of this book is the assembly of illustrations, drawn from original publications and historical texts. Rich with color, typeset with clarity, and organized for the discerning eye, this collection is a marvel of material bookmaking: all the more valuable in an age of evanescent screenshots.
A celebratory anthology of children’s literature, from classics to innovators.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780691274638
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
