Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
Charles Dickens wrote one book that never appears on his “collected works” lists. That is The Life of Our Lord, a “child’s new testament” that he wrote for his own children for Christmas one year. It was first published in 1934, 64 years after Dickens’s death. In The Life of Our Lord, Charles Dickens retells
When I heard the concept of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz (monologues given by medieval children), I thought it would be horribly boring. Monologues? I thought. What is fun about monologues? I thought children would be bored by these “Voices from a Medieval Village.” To my delight, I found Good Masters! Sweet
My Thoughts Most people in the blogging world have already commented on this series. But, nevertheless, I will add that I enjoyed Rowling’s amazing creativity in writing this series, although I think her writing was pretty generic and nothing special; especially in the later volumes, Rowling could have fine tuned the novels a lot more.
The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling contain much more than the story of the adopted wolf-boy, Mowgli, who is probably the most familiar of Kipling’s characters. Kipling’s Jungle Books are collections of stories about animals and people from around the world. Each story seems to be rooted in traditional facts
The Arrival by Shaun Tan is the story of all immigrants. By relying solely on pencil illustrations, Shaun Tan attempts to capture the emotions and the story of not just one man leaving his family to enter a new world but the story of all immigrants entering a new life. I was not completely convinced
I didn’t understand The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry at all. I guess I’m not a child. A pilot has crashed his plane in the desert. While striving to repair it, he meets a young boy from a asteroid-star planet. The little prince’s planet has 44 sunsets a day, and the little prince is
While I loved the gorgeous illustrations in Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret and I was entertained by the story, I found the writing amateur and the developing plot overdramatic. In the end, however, I liked this children’s novel, as “unbalanced” as it felt. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is an illustrated
I read Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories because I wanted to read this Nobel-prize winning author and also because I remembered the imaginative premise of his magical world and wanted to experience his world as an adult. I very much enjoyed reading them again, although there are some “politically incorrect” stereotypes in them I hadn’t
I don’t usually reread children’s fantasy, but as I read one of Madeleine L’Engle’s memoirs, I decided to reread her most well-known novel, A Wrinkle in Time. A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by a number of publishers before it was finally accepted and published in 1962. It subsequently won the 1963 Newbery medal. This
As I mentioned, I nearly cried as I finished reading my son Winnie-the-Pooh a few weeks ago. I determined to find another book like it. I recalled watching a movie as a child about a Mole and a Badger and a Toad. I hardly remembered the story of The Wind and the Willows, but knowing
I’ve been reading The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne to my infant son. I can’t determine what he thinks of them — I read while he kicks and rolls around the floor — but I truly enjoy reading them. The Complete Tales includes the story books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House on
Page [tcb_pagination_current_page] of [tcb_pagination_total_pages]
