Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult

Handy (contributing editor, Vanity Fair) writes in an adult voice that is sophisticated and charming and occasionally profane, yet he accesses his own childhood authentically and reacts to the stories through this youthful gaze. The listening pose of a child hearing a story is rapt and present and expecting to be delighted, and Handy drops naturally into this posture, expressing a joy and wonder that is authentically his and often not shared by the children at his side. When this happens he shrugs off their no-funness in precisely the way they might shrug off their nonplussed neighbor at the library's story time. This invites the adult reader to sit at his other side, in the same posture, and makes this book delightful to read—especially for parents who may be encountering critical theories of children's literature for the first time. Once the reader is so "seated," the criticism served up on books such as Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat is rollicking and razor sharp, consistently engaging, always on point, and packed with history, theory, and humor.