In A Sense Much Great Literature Is

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.

Many Americans Think Of The Rest Of The World As A Kind Of Disneyland, A Showplace For Quaint Fauna, Flora And Artifacts. They Dress For Travel In Cheap, Comfortable, Childish Clothes, As If They Were Going To The Zoo And Would Not Be Seen By Anyone Except The Animals.

Fashion Is Free Speech, And One Of The Privileges, If Not Always One Of The Pleasures, Of A Free World

If Nothing Will Finally Survive Of Life Besides What Artists Report Of It, We Have No Right To Report What We Know To Be Lies.

The Great Subversive Works Of Children's Literature Suggest That There Are Other Views Of Human Life Besides Those Of The Shopping Mall And The Corporation. They Mock Current Assumptions And Express The Imaginative, Unconventional, Noncommercial View Of The World In Its Simplest And Purest Form. They Appeal To The Imaginative, Questioning, Rebellious Child Within All Of Us, Renew Our Instinctive Energy, And Act As A Force For Change. This Is Why Such Literature Is Worthy Of Our Attention And Will Endure Long After More Conventional Tales Have Been Forgotten.