300 years of children’s classics -- and a few left on Platform 9 3/4

THE world of children’s literature spans centuries, civilizations and alternate realities. Anchored by “Cinderella” at one end and “Heather Has Two Mommies” at the other, it is a world populated with stories for the very young, such as “The Adventures of Peter Rabbit” and “Winnie-the-Pooh,” as well as tales for the older set by Rudyard Kipling, J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis and others. The roads that lead to Pooh and Harry Potter and Narnia can be fraught with danger, but they are always enchanting, taking children on journeys they will remember for the rest of their lives.

“The Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature” brings together works from 170 authors and illustrators spanning more than 300 years -- from John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” to Julius Lester’s “John Henry” -- in a single volume. Weighing in at 5 pounds and filling nearly 2,500 pages, it’s not exactly beach reading. The editors envision it instead as a college sourcebook of children’s literature, education and comparative literature.

The anthology is divided into 19 chapters, among them “Myths,” “Fairy Tales,” “Science Fiction,” “Verse” and “Adventure Tales,” as well as a unique chapter devoted to comics. The editors who assembled this volume are acknowledging that graphic works have a place in children’s literature and constitute “an important ... form of popular written culture.” Far be it from me to quibble. Many of my happiest childhood hours were spent reading “Superman,” “Wonder Woman” (oh, those bracelets!) and “Captain Marvel.” Somehow the notion that bad things in the world could be conquered simply by uttering “Shazam!” was comforting.

What to put in and what to leave out of such an anthology? Given that there are hundreds of thousands of books, poems, plays and other literature written for children -- not to mention “crossover” works that appeal to kids and adults -- finding an answer to that question leads to the more fundamental one: What precisely is children’s literature? Is it what parents think children ought to read? Or is it anything that children read? Do bodice-ripping romances constitute children’s literature if a child comes across a parent’s stash of Harlequins and surreptitiously devours them one by one?

One way of getting a handle on these questions is to select a popular example of children’s literature and ask what in particular qualifies it as such. Take Harry Potter, for instance. The number of children who have read the series is legion; each successive volume has broken publishing records. (Harry and others are notably absent from this volume, but more on that later.)

The Harry Potter saga is essentially a fairy tale -- a modern one, granted, but a fairy tale nonetheless. Harry, like the hero or heroine in traditional fairy tales, is deprived of parental care early on and must rely on his own resources to survive. Like Snow White, who must survive an assassination attempt, or Hansel and Gretel, who face imminent starvation, Harry must overcome a series of mortal threats. And as is the case with all fairy tales, the protagonist must enter into a climactic struggle against an evil force: the murderous queen in “Snow White,” the witch in “Hansel and Gretel” and Voldemort in the Harry Potter stories.

As these struggles are played out on the page, another takes place within the child, an inner struggle between self-doubts and a desire to transcend them. If the hero or heroine is to survive both psychologically and physically, he or she must draw on heretofore untapped inner strengths. Various challenges enable the hero or heroine -- and readers who go along for the ride -- to face and overcome insecurities that are part of growing up.

What kind of insecurities? The same ones suffered by Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”: doubts about one’s intelligence, courage and ability to emotionally connect, to be empathetic. No child, including Dorothy, likes to think of himself or herself as dumb, cowardly or devoid of feeling. By accompanying her companions on a journey of self-discovery, Dorothy masters her perceived shortcomings and is better able to cope with the many obstacles encountered on the yellow brick road of life.

A child’s ability to access unrealized parts of the self is a key component of maturation, and that process is the subtext of a host of works that children hold dear. Great literature both delights and informs. Great children’s literature portrays the struggles and insecurities peculiar to youth.

Children have many other emotional concerns, of course. Consider this from Jane Taylor’s 1806 poem “The Star,” reproduced in the chapter on verse: “Then the traveller in the dark / Thanks you for your tiny spark.” What are these lines but a reflection of a small child’s wish for direction and guidance? Adults who recognize Taylor’s ode largely through its opening line, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” may regard the poem merely as quaint verse. But it is much more.

In a similar vein, Irish children during the 19th century were weaned on little poems that touched on death:

Willie in one of his quaint new sashes,

Fell into the fire and burnt to ashes;

After a while the room grew chilly,

But nobody wanted to poke poor Willie.

Limerick-like verses of this nature are, in part, childhood meditations on mortality and illustrate how words can assist children in dealing with childhood fears and concerns. It thus is curious that the Oz and Harry Potter stories are nowhere to be found in the Norton collection. Neither is “Treasure Island” nor “Bambi” nor Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince.” All are enduring classics that possess emotional resonance for young readers and are deserving of a place in an anthology of this sort.

The authors mention cost as a factor in choosing what to include in the volume. Publishers often charge exorbitant amounts for reprint rights to works for which they hold the copyright, sometimes exceeding the treasure in Ali Baba’s cave. This may explain why one rarely comes across excerpts from the Harry Potter series in magazines and anthologies. But many of the aforementioned classics are in the public domain, so cost cannot be the only issue.

Another consideration is space. There is just so much one can cram into a single volume without needing a forklift to raise it off the shelf. Yet the Norton anthology devotes a chapter to the teaching of the English alphabet and another to primers and readers, which features an excerpt from “Fun With Dick and Jane” as well as instructions on writing effective letters. These seem to have more to do with literacy than with literature.

The “Primers and Readers” chapter, for example, includes a letter by Anne Boleyn to England’s King Henry VIII, professing her innocence on the eve of her execution. If her pleas are ignored, she writes, “then I desire of God, that he will pardon your great sin....” The letter ends with Anne begging her husband to spare the lives of her five alleged lovers. (He didn’t.) It’s hard to view this as an example of children’s literature, much less a model of persuasive letter-writing.

Such caveats aside, the anthology is worthy of praise. The introductory remarks in each section explain the background for the subgenres and offer a historical overview. It is difficult to appreciate the significance of fairy tales unless one knows that they originally were meant for adult consumption and featured scenes of rape and incest. The steps the Grimm brothers undertook in transforming these stories into “household tales” provides a context for understanding the contribution the stories make to children’s literature.

The editors also offer variants of familiar works. Included in the “Verse” chapter are Lewis Carroll’s “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat” as well as the 1960s playground ditty “Ringo, Ringo, Ringo Starr.” (As a counterpoint to “Up above the world so high, / Like a diamond in the sky” we have “Underneath that mop of hair, / Ringo are you really there?”) And in the chapter devoted to fairy tales, Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” and the Grimms’ “Little Red Cap” are joined by Roald Dahl’s version of the story, in which the heroine pulls a pistol from her knickers and shoots the wolf in the head.

If one metaphorically views the collection as a child, the offspring of its editors, then the anthology suffers from shortcomings, as do all children. But readers who stick with it will be amply rewarded, with insight not only into this body of literature but also into themselves. For if there is one unassailable truth it is that once upon a time all of us were children. *