The Man in the Moon has dropped down to earth for a visit. Over the hedge, a rabbit in trousers is having a pipe with his evening paper. Elsewhere, Alice is passing through a looking glass, Dorothy riding a tornado to Oz, and Jack climbing a beanstalk to heaven. To enter the world of children's literature is to journey to a realm where the miraculous and the mundane exist side by side, a world that is at once recognizable and real--and enchanted. Many books have probed the myths and meanings of children's stories, but ...
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The Man in the Moon has dropped down to earth for a visit. Over the hedge, a rabbit in trousers is having a pipe with his evening paper. Elsewhere, Alice is passing through a looking glass, Dorothy riding a tornado to Oz, and Jack climbing a beanstalk to heaven. To enter the world of children's literature is to journey to a realm where the miraculous and the mundane exist side by side, a world that is at once recognizable and real--and enchanted. Many books have probed the myths and meanings of children's stories, but Goldthwaite's Natural History is the first exclusively to survey the magic that lies at the heart of the literature. From the dish that ran away with the spoon to the antics of Brer Rabbit and Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat, Goldthwaite celebrates the craft, the invention, and the inspired silliness that fix these tales in our minds from childhood and leave us in a state of wondering to know how these things can be. Covering the three centuries from the fairy tales of Charles Perrault to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are , he gathers together all the major imaginative works of America, Britain, and Europe to show how the nursery rhyme, the fairy tale, and the beast fable have evolved into modern nonsense verse and fantasy. Throughout, he sheds important new light on such stock characters as the fool and the fairy godmother and on the sources of authors as diverse as Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter. His bold claims will inspire some readers and outrage others. He hails Pinocchio , for example, as the greatest of all children's books, but he views C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia as a parable that is not only murderously misogynistic, but deeply blasphemous as well. Fresh, incisive, and utterly original, this rich literary history will be required reading for anyone who cares about children's books and their enduring influence on how we come to see the world.
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Add this copy of The Natural History of Make-Believe: a Guide to the to cart. $3.49, like new condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Oxford University Press, USA.
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Add this copy of The Natural History of Make-Believe: a Guide to the to cart. $7.00, very good condition, Sold by Chaparral Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Portland, OR, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Oxford University Press.
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Very Good in Very Good jacket. Size: 9x6x1; The binding is tight, corners sharp. Text unmarked. The dust jacket shows some very light handling, in a mylar cover. 8vo. 386pp.
Add this copy of The Natural History of Make-Believe: a Guide to the to cart. $8.00, very good condition, Sold by Book Alley rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Pasadena, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Oxford University Press.
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Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 0195038061. This book is in very good condition; no remainder marks. Appears to have been gently used. Inside pages are clean.; 1.39 x 9.71 x 6.44 Inches; 400 pages.
