The Boy Detective in Early British Children’s Literature: Patrolling the Borders between Boyhood and Manhood by Lucy Andrew (review)

Abstract

Children’s Literature Association Quarterly she was visiting the University of Connecticut. Drawing on recorded interviews with Travers, Griswold discusses their shared interests in “yoga and Zen and mysticism,” the origins of the nanny, Mary Poppins, and Travers’s disdain for Walt Disney’s film adaption of Mary Poppins. In “Bruno Bettelheim,” Griswold describes Bettelheim’s contradictory behavior when he visited San Diego State University to deliver a lecture on fairy tales. At times, the psychologist seemed to thrive on conflict, intentionally stirring up controversies during a question-and-answer session and berating Griswold for retuning him late to his hotel. At other moments, Bettelheim delivered a brilliant lecture, comforted a distraught bystander, and carefully explained his ideas to graduate students. In a nod to his own general audience, Griswold ultimately praises the accessibility of Bettelheim’s writing: “Bettelheim knew his stuff. His ideas were written for everyday people, but that did not indicate any superficiality. Instead, he was, like Margaret Mead or Paul Goodman, a ‘public scholar’” (46). Several essays focus on the affective power of reading literature, including “Ronald Reagan’s Childhood Reading” which suggests ways in which Reagan’s early reading may have shaped his later political beliefs. My favorite essay in the volume, “Reading Differently After 9/11” focuses on how the events of 9/11 have shaped our readings of children’s classics such as Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit (1902), Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie (1941), and Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon (1947). While expectations of individual readers will certainly shape their responses to Behind Children’s Books, Jerry Griswold’s adventures in the world of children’s literature will undoubtedly inspire thousands of literary banquets.