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ENCHANTED HUNTERS

Name: ENCHANTED HUNTERS
Author: Maria Tatar
ISBN: 978-0-393-06601-2

THE POWER OF STORIES IN CHILDHOOD

by Maria Tatar ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2009

Despite the jargon and occasional stuffiness, a cheering paean to children and reading.

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An academic-popular hybrid seeks to redeem children passionate about reading from the derogative label of bookworm.

The act of reading is an active rather than a passive experience, avers Tatar (Germanic Languages and Literature/Harvard Univ.; The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, 2002, etc.). She adopts a personal tone in this exploration of children’s interaction with their literature, introducing in a disarming fashion her bedtime reading with her offspring before launching into a brief history of children’s literature followed by closer readings of several sacred childhood texts. Pulling her examples from both popular sources (she spends a lot of time with E.T.) and academic (Walter Benjamin figures prominently), as well as the recollections of her students, the author argues that a child reading is every bit as fervently engaged as a child at play. The best children’s literature, she continues, is designed to feed into and play off their need for wonder and adventure. Works covered include such venerable favorites as Alice in Wonderland and The Secret Garden but also roam forward in time to survey the contributions of Norton Juster, Philip Pullman and Dr. Seuss—indeed, the most piercing and sprightly observations come from Tatar’s reading of The Cat in the Hat. Despite attempts to keep the tone conversational, the author’s academic roots show: Words like transgressive and anomie rear their ugly heads, and at times the text feels like a digest of university lectures. Still, Tatar’s genuine fondness for her subject is palpable. “We can all remember the jolts and shimmer of books we read as children,” she writes. “That is why we revisit them as adults raising or educating children.” And “Souvenirs of Reading,” a collection of excerpts from writers’ recollections their childhood favorites, is easily one of the most endearing appendices ever affixed to a semi-scholarly work.

Despite the jargon and occasional stuffiness, a cheering paean to children and reading.

Pub Date: April 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-393-06601-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HEROINE WITH 1001 FACES
by Maria Tatar

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ANNOTATED AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLKTALES
edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. & Maria Tatar

- BOOK REVIEW
OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
by Maria Tatar

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)