Are some of the world's most talented writers of children's books essentially children themselves? In this engaging series of essays, Pulitzer prize-winning author Alison Lurie considers this theory, exploring children's classics from many eras and relating them to the authors who wrote them, including Louisa May Alcott, creator of Little Women, and Salman Rushdie and his Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Dr Seuss and J.K. Rowling. In analysing these and many other authors, Alison Lurie shows how these gifted writers have used children's literature to transfigure sorrow, nostalgia and the struggles of their own experience.

Author Biography

Alison Lurie's books for children include Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales and The Heavenly Zoo. She is the author of a number of much admired adult novels, including The War Between the Tates and Last Resort. Alison Lurie is a winner of the Prix Femina Etranger for The Truth About Lorin Jones and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Foreign Affairs. She divides her time between the USA and London.