As new parents and anyone who’s ever gone rummaging through their old childhood libraries quickly realises, much of the best literature for kids is bonkers. It all makes divine sense when you’re four or five or 10, but return as an adult to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Cat in the Hat, and what’s striking is that so much sublime whimsy and exuberant creativity could have been conjured up by our fellow grownups.
Then again, there’s a theory that children’s authors – the best of them, at any rate – never really grow up. Lewis Carroll famously – notoriously from today’s perspective – preferred playing games with children to adult conversation. Kenneth Grahame amassed a vast collection of toys – in his 20s. And Dodie Smith, a fascinating writer best known today for her children’s novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, used to say she never felt quite grown up. (At under five feet tall and with a high-pitched, perpetually girlish voice, she perhaps had more excuse than most.)
read more here @ BBC - Culture
- Kay Thompson, Eloise
- Theodor Geisel, aka Dr Seuss,
- EB White, Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web
- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
- Margaret Wise Brown, The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon
- Dodie Smith, The Hundred & One Dalmatians
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