Nonfiction
Boys and Girls Forever: Children's Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter
by Alison Lurie
Penguin Books, 2003
- ISBN-10: 0142002526
- ISBN-13: 9780142002520
In this engaging series of essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alison Lurie explores the theory that the best children's books authors have often preferred the world of young people to the world of adults. Lurie looks at children's classics from every era and relates them to the authors who wrote them, including Little Women author Louisa May Alcott and Wizard of Oz author Frank Baum, as well as Dr. Seuss and Salman Rushdie. In the Process she reveals how these gifted writers have used children's literature to transfigure sorrow, nostalgia, and the struggles of their own experiences.