Tag Archives: Children’s literature

Alison Lurie’s Boys and Girls Forever: Children’s Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter

“It often seems that the most gifted authors of books for children are not like other writers: instead, in some essential way, they are children themselves. There may be outward signs of this condition: these people may prefer the company … Continue reading

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Jack Zipes’s The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature

Do come in. Just give me a moment to mark my place in Patricia McKillip’s Solstice Wood, the novel I’m reading just now. Did you know that she started her exemplary career writing young adult fiction, including The House on … Continue reading

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Jack Zipes’s Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry

Chuck Lipsig wrote this review. I am not, I suspect, the intended audience for Jack Zipes’s Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry. Zipes is a solidly on the political left, bemoaning the capitalist culture industry, especially … Continue reading

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Lloyd Alexander’s The Rope Trick

What is magic? Although she doesn’t know it, this is the question confronting Lidi, a young traveling magician, whose sleight of hand tricks earn her a living and bring her across the path of some likeable companions and some unsavory … Continue reading

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Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark

Theo is a young apprentice to a printer, an orphan who has been looked after by his community and his master, Anton. Business has been down lately because the Chief Minister Cabbarus has required official approval for every publication, with … Continue reading

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Lloyd Alexander’s Time Cat

Jason’s in trouble. He’s been sent to his room for, among other things, spilling paint on the dining room table, punching his younger brother for laughing at him, and talking back to his mother. Sulking in his room, he turns … Continue reading

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Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, and The Castle of Llyr audiobooks, read by James Langton

Lloyd Alexander brought magic to my childhood, never more so than with the five books collectively called the Chronicles of Prydain. I adored these books, and read them time on time. They were for me what the Harry Potter series … Continue reading

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Alan Garner’s Elidor

Rebecca Swain wrote this for Folk Tales, our precursor. I started reading this book with the idea of skimming it for information to give when offering it to Folk Tales reviewers. Before I knew it I had finished it. I … Continue reading

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J.R.R. Tolkien and Baillie Tolkien’s Letters From Father Christmas (Revised Edition), and Letters From Father Christmas, read by The Usual Suspects, Longfellow Books, Portland, Maine, USA, December 16, 2002

Every Christmas between the years 1920 and 1943, the ever-so-blessed children of J.R.R. Tolkien received some of the most unique mail that a child could ever hope for: letters from Father Christmas himself! Beautifully illustrated and delivered in various ways, … Continue reading

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Jane Louise Curry’s Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and Robin Hood in the Greenwood

Rebecca Swain wrote this review. These hardcover retellings of the traditional Robin Hood legend are geared for children 9-12. While I feel that children over the age of 10 might find these books too young, I do think they are … Continue reading

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