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Liv's Unconventional Booklist

August 6, 2024

In his 1952 essay “On Three Ways of Writing For Children”, C.S. Lewis opined:

“To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence…But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being grown up is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

According to Lewis, you are now old enough to read fairy stories. So pick these up, and allow their deep truths to travel past your brain and into your soul along the highway that allows the most important traffic: your child-like imagination.

These are some of the tales and works of art that formed my imagination and made me believe that the world is good. Underneath and in spite of all, this world is good. “One good turn deserves another” and “life calls to life” spoken by these characters have brought me calm confidence that a small life lived generously is “the reward worth having.”

These stories fill you up, comfort you that you are right to long for companions, reassure you that good and mercy overcome the darkness, and virtue triumphs, though through warfare. That life is worth living.

You might see this list as a description of what wins. Dedication, Bravery, Compassion, Desire, Delight, Rest, Trust, Long-Suffering, Perseverance, Friendship, Insight, Patience, Gentleness, Loyalty, Memory, Respect, Reverence, Humility, Wonder, Humor, which all together are nothing without Love. These works are good and beautiful love stories about truth.

As the list goes on, you’ll find works that are written for older readers. The conflicts swell from Eeyore’s loneliness, to Eustace’s imprisonment in a dragon’s body, to Kristin’s slavery to pride, but they are still stories best received by grown-ups who remember that, moments ago, they were children, and the lessons from the fairy stories still apply.

I’ve linked to these specific versions. I very strongly recommend them, as much depends on the retelling, translation, or artwork. Immerse; swim; bask in these delights.

The Reward Worth Having - Jay Williams, illust. Mercer Mayer

East of the Sun, West of the Moon - Mercer Mayer

Beauty and the Beast - retold by Marianna Mayer, illust. Mercer Mayer

Snow White - retold by Randall Jarrell, illust. Nancy Ekholm Burkert

Fenist the Falcon - trans. Dorian Rottenberg, illust. S. Kovaljov [FREE resource]

The Tale of the Firebird - Grennady Spirin

The Hedgehog Boy - Retold by Jane Langton, illust. Ilse Plume

A Child’s Garden of Verses - Robert Louis Stevenson, compiled by Cooper Edens

The Complete Brambly Hedge - Jill Barklem

The Complete Book of Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker

And a wonderful compilation of songs created to accompany the Flower Fairy Alphabet

Now We Are Six - A.A. Milne