Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and Children’s Literature

Outstanding Academic Title for 2007, Choice Magazine

In this engaging and reflective essay, Jerry Griswold examines the unique qualities of childhood experience and their reappearance as frequent themes in children’s literature. Surveying dozens of classic and popular works for the young–from Heidi and The Wizard of Oz to Beatrix Potter and Harry Potter–Griswold demonstrates how great children’s writers succeed because of their uncanny ability to remember what it feels like to be a kid: playing under tables, shivering in bed on a scary night, arranging miniature worlds with toys, zooming around as caped superheroes, listening to dolls talk.

No softheaded discussion of kids’ cute convictions nor a developmentally-focused critique of their immature beliefs, Feeling Like a Kid boldly and honestly identifies the ways in which the young think and see the world in a manner different from that of adults. Written by a leading scholar, prize-winning author, and frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, this extensively illustrated book will fascinate general readers as well as all those who study childhood and children’s literature.