Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
W. W. Norton & Company (2009), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 304 pages
Description
Tatar challenges the assumptions we make about childhood reading. By exploring how beauty and horror operate in children's literature, she examines how and what children read, showing how literature transports and transforms children with its intoxicating, captivating and occasionally terrifying energy.
Media reviews
Enchanted Hunters is not about classic fairytales but about authored children's writing, what children take and need from stories, and how this is not always what parents imagine....This is a grown-up book for grown-up people who haven't forgotten being childhood readers. It satisfies imagination
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and curiosity, revisiting things you suddenly remember clearly, telling you new things you didn't know. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member JBD1
An exploration of why stories matter so much to children - how they shape our lives, how their themes inform our youthful sensibilities. Tatar also examines the historical phenomenon of adults reading to children (specifically but not entirely limited to bedtime reading). She uses examples with
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wide appeal, designed to evoke memories in her readers of their own childhood reading (entirely successfully in my case). Somewhat specialized, but absolutely fascinating in its look at how powerful reading can be to the young. Show Less
LibraryThing member Kellswitch
I found this to be a fascinating book, I didn't learn anything I hadn't known before, but it did make me look at how other people look at reading and readers a bit differently.
Well I did read one thing I hadn't known. Apparently there are people who find negative messages in Goodnight Moon of all
It's always a dicey thing when adults try to assume they know how and why children react they way they do to things, especially something as internalized and intimate as reading, but the author did a good job of not coming down on one side or the other in this book, she just used other opinions and examples to show the different points of view on this.
I really enjoyed how she explored and explained the changes and evolution of books for children, we used to read some truly nasty things to them, and I really enjoyed her more detailed look at the classics such as Alice In Wonderland and Dr. Seuss's books, showing not only why they worked, but how they changed children's literature and why people find them so threatening.
Well I did read one thing I hadn't known. Apparently there are people who find negative messages in Goodnight Moon of all
Show More
things....It's always a dicey thing when adults try to assume they know how and why children react they way they do to things, especially something as internalized and intimate as reading, but the author did a good job of not coming down on one side or the other in this book, she just used other opinions and examples to show the different points of view on this.
I really enjoyed how she explored and explained the changes and evolution of books for children, we used to read some truly nasty things to them, and I really enjoyed her more detailed look at the classics such as Alice In Wonderland and Dr. Seuss's books, showing not only why they worked, but how they changed children's literature and why people find them so threatening.
Show Less
Physical description
304 p.; 6.54 inches
ISBN
0393066010 / 9780393066012
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