Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and Children’s Literature (2006) is a short, lovely reflection on children’s literature. Author Jerry Griswold is an expert in children’s literature, and clearly a lover of it as well.
This book’s brevity is both a draw–it’s a quick read, and an easy one–and a turnoff. Like a great picture book, nothing this wonderful should come to an end this quickly. Griswold follows feeling through the realm of children’s literature, identifying five feelings he argues are central to kidlit: snugness, scariness, smallness, lightness, and aliveness.
These qualities blend physical components with emotion, as well as symbolic and at times conceptual components. I found myself both moved and convinced as a read: I found myself saying, “Yes!” Sometimes I also stroked the book in approval. Griswold illustrates his claims with examples from a range of classic children’s books: picture books and chapter books, from multiple countries and centuries.
Griswold spends some time on why kidlit has these qualities, but to be honest, I found this less moving, in part because the identification of the qualities made it seem self-evident. “Yes! Snugness!” I found myself flashing back to reading under blankets and under tables, and being tucked into boxes with willing pets.
I can’t say enough good about this.
