Classic children’s literature

My love of reading and writing started with my parents reading to me; children’s poetry, like A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885), and Boswell’s Treasury of Poetry, and fairy tales, like the classic collections by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Wilhelm Hauff, Charles Perrault and the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights. From the fairytales I moved on to the best in the world of children’s literature, and never stopped reading. The illustrations in these children’s books were my start to a love of art and a sense of aesthetics. But it is the poetry that gave me my love for the words, the lilt and rhythm, playfulness and punning, and imagery and ideas of the English language. I was lucky – my parents were teachers and librarians, and not only did they read to my brother and me, but they read to us in four languages. (Continue reading…)