Rediscovering Children's Books

Last night I read Noel Perrin's book A Child's Delight , and I must say it is also an adult's delight.
In the 1980s he wrote a monthly column for the Washington Post:

"It was called 'Rediscoveries.' Each of these monthly essays focused on a neglected minor masterpiece for grown-ups, with the avowed purpose of luring people into reading it."

The column was successful but it came to an end when he had run through his collection of books in that category. Years later he was invited to revisit the topic, only this time, to look at neglected children's books that deserved greater attention.

He and his editor had some trouble coming up with a list they both agreed on. Perrin came up with a list of 17 books, but the editor rejected eight of them as too well known. The editor, a well read man, didn't want books that were too famous. The point was to recommend pieces that everybody didn't already know. But how would two well read gentlemen from upper class families know what is and what isn't commonly known to the Post readers?

Perrin taught American Literature at Dartmouth College, so he took a survey of his students. The results were surprising, and frankly, to me a little disheartening. Keeping in mind that these were Dartmouth students, so we're already talking about the cream of the crop, or at least a self selected group of people who presumably could read.

He was a bit surprised, too, so he asked a friend who taught high school at Exeter to give the the same survey to fifty of his high school students, and the results were similar . Of these one hundred students, 3 had heard of T. H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose, only two had read it. Only one had heard of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle ( expect this has changed now, and I wonder if Perrin's book had anything to do with this?). Twenty had heard of Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. Only three of them had read it.Of his 100 students, 37 had heard of Lloyd Alexander's Book of Three. Only twenty of them had actually read it.

And so he selected books he admired , books, his children and stepchildren had enjoyed, and books that fewer than 20 percent of his surveyed students had heard of. I was glad to know that Narnia, Little Women, the Little House books, and Winnie the Pooh did not make the cut.

These little essays make up this book. He calls it a 'bouquet, not a botany text' and makes no claims to cover children's literature in any sort of systemic fashion. The majority of his books were published in the 20th century and he really has chosen some jewels. I think his children and stepchildren must have been mainly girls, as there is a slight imbalance of 'doll' books, but there is also Ernest Thompson Seton's very boy oriented "Two Little Savages," which every family who enjoys the Dangerous Book for Boys should read aloud together.

Other books and authors he reviews:
Leslie Brook- Johnny Crow's Garden •
Wanda Gag - Millions of Cats •
- Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System •(I thought this the strangest choice of the collection and suspect he and his students considered them 'little known' because of their age) Rumer Godden The Doll's House •
Mary Stolz A Dog on Barkham Street •
- Nathaniel Hawthorne A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls and Tanglewood Tales •
- Mary Norton The Borrowers •
Virginia Hamilton The Planet of Junior Brown •
- Ernest Thompson Seton Two Little Savages •
T.H. White Mistress Masham's Repose •
Margery Sharp The Rescuers •
Lucy Boston's The Children of Green Knowe
Edward Eager's Half Magic
P.L. Travers I Go by Sea, I Go by Land (I thought we were the only ones who had read this one!)
Jean Merrill's The Pushcart War
Nesbit's Railway Children
Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle
Watership Down
LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea
Noel Streatfeild's Shoes books
and a good many others.

If you aren't comfortable with magic books, there will be less for you in this collection than for others, but I am glad I have the book (yay, paperbackswap!). There are two books that, based on his reviews, I am not sure I want to read (Z for Zachariah, for one example). Most of them I had already read, but I enjoyed and learned from his reviews anyway. There are a few titles I will be looking to read for the first time, thanks to his introduction.

He doesn't give spoilers, because he wants people to read the books he reviews. He does give insights into what to look for, things that you might miss otherwise. My favorite of these is the first one, where he reviews the simple, but delightful, Johnny Crow's Garden, long one of my favorites.

This is a book that simply must be held in the hands and pored over with some care and attention, and the amusing illustrations will reward such diligence. As Perrin points out, the text is deceptively simple- this book's charm is in the story told in the pictures. The learned Stork gives that philosophic talk (see picture to right, click to enlarge) '

Till the Hippopotami
Said "Ask no further 'what Am I?"

As Perrin says

"As a small boy; hearing the book read to me by my mother, I had no idea that 'hippopotami' was the proper Greek plural for hippopotamus, nor would I have much cared if I had known. I just loved the triple rhyme. But as an adult reading to my own children, I am tickled by the propriety, not to mention the incipient identity crisis, in what the Stork is saying, and I am even more tickled by the titles of the books that professorial bird has brought along.

If you look hard ... you will see that one of the books is by Confucius, only here it's spelled Confuseous. Another of the Stork's books has both title and author in Latin. Well, sort of. Ludovicus Carrollus, De Jabberwockibus appears on the cover.

Perrin gives us some context for why Brooke is paying this small tribute to the father of nonsense for children, and then tells us that Leslie Brooke himself noted that 'the child does not mind a bit if there are things he does not quite understand.' and Perrin says

"It's important that there be things he or she doesn't understand, or understands only partly, by guessing from the context. That's an excellent way to learn."

And so is reading Perrin's own book. All the reviews are informative and give tasty little tidbits of information the reader might otherwise miss. Recommended.