In the last chapter of his book, Feeling Like A Kid, Jerry Griswold points out that one big difference between adult literature and children’s literature is that in books for kids, everything is often alive—from the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland to...

  We’ve been following Jerry Griswold’s book, Feeling Like A Kid. In Chapter Four he introduces another major theme in children’s literature: lightness vs. heaviness. We see the love of “lightness” in the way kids are dazzled by kites and helium balloons, zoom on...

Children are fascinated with smallness, says Jerry Griswold in his book, Feeling Like A Kid. So it’s no surprise that littleness is a frequent topic in children’s literature: Alice shrinking, Dorothy among the Munchkins, Stuart Little in his little car, Little Red...

  We grownups are sometimes tempted to imagine childhood as sweet and innocent. (No wonder many children’s stories are sentimental and saccharine.) But the truth is, being a kid is scary—says Jerry Griswold in his book, Thinking Like A Kid. Remember the terror of...

Kids love snug places. They like to play underneath tables or make tents from blankets and chairs or find secret hideaways. In his book, Feeling Like A Kid, Jerry Griswold shows that Snugness is a big theme in children’s literature—from Badger’s cozy underground home...

What does it actually feel like to be a kid? Jerry Griswold, director of the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, has written an insightful little book that helps us with that. It’s called Feeling Like A Kid. Griswold says there are five themes that...