The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America - Hardcover

The man in the moon has dropped down for a visit, Alice is passing through a looking glass, Dorothy riding a tornado to Oz, and Jack climbing a beanstalk to the heavens. To enter the world of children's literature is to journey to a realm where the real and the enchanted exist side by side. Spanning three centuries from Perrault's fairy tales to Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, this volume provides the first literary study devoted solely to imaginative writings for children, and the only history to gather together all the major works of Britain, Europe, and America. In tracing how the nursery rhyme, the fairy tale, and the beast fable evolved into modern nonsense verse and narrative fantasy, we are offered fascinating insights into the works of Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Grahame, and A. A. Milne, amongst others. Goldthwaite's bold claims will inspire some readers and outrage others. He hails Pinocchio, for example, as the greatest of all children's books, but views C.S Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia as a parable that is not only misogynistic but also deeply blasphemous.

John Goldthwaite is a noted children's book author whose essays and reviews have appeared inSignal, Harper's, The New York Times, and New York Magazine.