The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration

Children's responses to literature are equally fascinating from the psychological and the literary point of view. Nicholas Tucker's exploratory study traces the relationship between the child and the book using both these perspectives, from the baby's first picture book to the moment when the adolescent reader takes up adult literature. In addition, it examines critically arguments for extra care and censorship in the selection of books for children, and conversely looks at what children's books can offer the adult reader. Ranging from nursery rhymes and fairy stories to comics, popular bestsellers and modern children's writing, the author's acute criticism offers a balanced view of a stimulating and sometimes controversial subject. 'For anyone who teaches or writes for children, exerts pressure or merely exercises parenthood, it is a rewarding, maddening, fascinating and utterly unclosable book.' -- The Times Educational Supplement '... nowhere in the writings about children's literature can one find a more attractive mode of expression than Tucker's'. -- Young Children