All posts filed under: Children

The Apple and the Arrow (Mary and Conrad Buff)

Published by Charles Haywood

Do any American children learn about William Tell today? Do any Swiss children learn about him? Very few, if any, I suspect. My children do, but only because last year I was reminded of William Tell by Ernst Jünger’s The Forest Passage, and so I went and bought what few children’s books are still in print about the Swiss hero. Among those was The Apple and the Arrow, winner of the Newberry Medal in 1952, which I have just finished reading to my children, to their great delight.

Five Children and It (E. Nesbit)

Published by Charles Haywood

Five Children and It is a book that resonates on two levels.  On one level, it is an outstanding and well-drawn children’s story.  We read it to our own children to general acclaim.  On another level, it is a glimpse of upper-class child-rearing in Edwardian England, very interesting as social history to today’s adults, even with no children around.

The Golden Key (George MacDonald)

Published by Charles Haywood

This is a very famous book, not quite children’s fairy tale and not quite adult allegory—or rather, it’s both, and more.  As fairy tale and as allegory, it has so light a touch as to be ethereal, combined with a feeling of enormous substance.  There is, for child or adult, little obvious moral, yet the reader is left with a feeling of transcendence.  Quite an accomplishment in what is really just a short story, and doubtless why the book is still famous today.