kid again, a kid who even engages in a food fight), with Tom Hanks’s reincarnation from
adult into child in the movie Big, with George Burns in Eighteen Again, with Dudley Moore
in Like Father, Like Son, with these (and a dozen other cultural or shared dreams seen
on the Big Screen) we can detect the anxieties of the middle-aged and a wish for
rejuvenation. Whatever the explanation then, whether the loss of childhood is seen as
cultural or personal phenomenon, America’s late twentieth century and acute interest in
children’s literature reminds us how much the subject is entwined with presentiments
of mortality and sentiments of nostalgia.
Further ReadingAttebery, B. (1980) The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Blanck, J. (1956) Peter Parley to Penrod: A Bibliographical Description of the Best-Loved American
Juvenile Books, Providence, NJ: Bowker.
Griswold, J. (1992) Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America’s Classic Children’s Books, New
York: Oxford University Press.
Jordan, A.M. (1949) From Rollo to Tom Sawyer, Boston: The Horn Book.
Kelly, R.G. (1974) Mother Was a Lady: Self and Society in Selected American Children’s Periodicals
1865–1890, Westport, CT: Greenwood.
MacLeod, A.S. (1975) A Moral Tale: Children’s Fiction and American Culture 1820–1860, Hamden,
CT: Archon Books.
Meigs, C. (ed.) (1969) A Critical History of Children’s Literature, New York: Macmillan.
Rosenbach A.S. W. (1933) Early American Children’s Books, Portland, ME: Southworth Press;
reprinted 1966, New York: Kraus.
Welch, d’A. (1972) A Bibliography of American Children’s Books Printed Prior to 1821, Worcester,
MD: American Antiquarian Society/Barre Publishers.
870 THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE