That some of children's literature's best writers were not very happy or well adjusted is a sad irony, soured further by WullschlÑger's crudely argued, unsympathetic survey of their lives and works. Children's literature underwent a creative boom in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with its Victorian golden age and Edwardian silver age. WullschlÑger, a literary critic and feature writer for the Financial Times, proposes that the former's most famous girl heroines and the latter's boy heroes reflected not only adult mores about children, but also their creators' arrested development, sexual repression, and neuroses. Amid a haphazard social and literary context, Carroll, Lear, Barrie, and Grahame are all portrayed flatly as ``boys who never grew up.'' WullschlÑger's semi-psychoanalytic biographies show some broad similarities: All of the authors were either Victorian confirmed bachelors or Edwardian failed fathers and husbands, whose emotional and creative outlets were channeled into relationships with children and tales for them. Carroll and Lear were bona fide eccentrics, but recent, richly detailed biographies show them to have been complex, adult characters. And while Barrie's preWW I adolescent heroism and Grahame's bucolic fantasies show an embarrassing lack of self-consciousness, WullschlÑger baldly overstates such points. Obtusely humorless as only a Freudian can be, she paints unflattering portraits of their creations, too, with Alice as a prim prig and Pooh as stupid and selfish. A.A. Milne, ironically, gets the harshest treatment, for living a happy life with his son until the creation of Winnie-the-Pooh; their subsequent estrangement marked them as ``the last victims of the literary obsession with childhood.'' WullschlÑger's psychoanalytic thesis about these authors is as familiar as their stories, and her mediocre discourse adds nothing to either their lives or works. (drawings and 8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-82286-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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