Lurie Alison. Don’t Tell the Grown-ups: subversive children’s literature

1990. — 229 p.In this spirited collection of essays, Pulitzer
Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie
explores a surprising theme: that the
best-loved children’s books tend to
challenge rather than uphold respectable
adult values. As the author writes, ‘ ‘Most
of the great works of juvenile literature are
subversive in one way or another: they
express ideas and emotions not generally
approved of or even recognized at the time;
they make fun of honored figures and
piously held beliefs; and they view social
pretenses with clear-eyed directness,
remarking — as in Andersen’s famous
tale — that the emperor has no clothes.’ ’
Alison Lurie’s subjects include the great
classic works written for children: Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan,
Winnie-the-Pooh, The Tale of Peter
Rabbit, the books of E. Nesbit and Kate
Greenaway. She finds that the ways of
subversion are varied. Beatrix Potter’s
Peter Rabbit may have had a fright
trespassing in Mr. McGregor’s garden, but
he returns there shortly, as Lurie notes,
quite unrepentant.’’ E. Nesbit’s worldly
children deflate adult hypocrisy. A. A.
Milne creates an alternative paradise of
gentleness and privacy. Lurie shows that
the enduring children’s books are not
patronizing or morally improving; rather,
they empathize with the child and value
the imaginative and unrestrained agenda
of childhood.
Fantastic stories do not captivate
children alone, however. Lurie also turns
her attention to the adult fascination with
children’s literature, with elves and
gnomes, and with the tales oflegend
written by T. H. White and J.R.R. Tblkien
and discusses the presence of fairy tale
motifs in modern novels, including those
of F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Updike.
Throughout Don't Tell the Grown-ups
Lurie relates the lives of the authors of
great children’s literature to the works
themselves. She movingly describes the
real worlds these men and women
inhabited as they created enchanted ones,
and she reveals how they transfigured the
sorrow, nostalgia, and struggle of their own
experience. If the best children’s literature
is subversive, it is perhaps because its
creators knew the failings of the grown-up
world too well. Because they tell the truth
with ingenuity and charm, these stories
will be read and reread long after more
proper and sentimental tales have been
forgotten.
Alison Lurie divides her time between
Ithaca, New York; London; and Key West.
She is a professor of English at Cornell
University, where she teaches writing,
folklore, and children’s literature. Her most
recent novel is The Truth About Larin
Jones, and her other highly acclaimed
novels include Foreign Affairs, which
won a Pulitzer Prize, and The War
Between the Tates.