In this case, however, there is nothing to spoil, for there is no plot. There is, really, nothing of substance to this book. To be fair, someone might object that it is designed for infants. True, but does this mean a book ought to have no words, no beauty, no glimpse of glory at all? What does this say of our view of children’s intellect
The idea of children’s literature is, in and of itself, a relatively recent phenomenon, I was reminded of this while reading aloud with my children George MacDonald’s delightfully strange (and oh-so-beautiful!) children’s book The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel, The Princess and Curdy. MacDonald, indeed, was a pioneer of such literature, historian Timothy Larsen notes. His work is deeply theological—as befits the Scottish theologian that he was—and has overt moral overtones
