Current Series Catalogue

Grown Ups Only:
Children’s Literature Revisited

We all have books we know and remember fondly from childhood, but unless we are reading aloud to children, we may not have read them for years. Why would any adult want to re-read a tale they loved when they were small?

Like books for adults, children’s books tell us about the society that created them. Many books for children deal with important “adult” topics such as friendship, the role of women in society, and even death. Bringing the insights life has taught us to our favorite children’s stories can help answer serious personal and intellectual questions. The books in this series revisit some classics you probably remember and a few you may have missed.

Iona Opie and Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales and Ethel Johnston Phelps, Tatterhood and Other Tales
These old favorites have some surprises for modern readers.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
This endearing novel provides some startling insights into nineteenth-century American life.

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
These bedtime stories and letters written to the author’s daughter portray a fantasy world.

E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web and Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
Both of these novels explore the realities of life, each probing the issues of friendship and death.

Mildred Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese
These two contemporary novels demonstrate dramatic changes in children’s books in the twentieth century.

Request this series online.