The easy truism, that a good children's book is a book that's good for children too, has enough truth in it to ensure that most fiction reviewers are at least open to the genre. But unless we specialise in children's fiction, the current literary theory about it is likely to interest only some and only at specific times: those of parenthood and of grandparenthood. My own present interest is the latter.

LRB 1 October 1981 | PDF Download