I’ve been working back in OZ lately, mostly with the classics section, and I’ve realized how much of a conundrum this section really presents.  What actually constitutes a children’s classic?  Is it the number of years it has stayed in print?  Is it based on fads (for example, will the Harry Potter series eventually be considered classics? Or is fantasy just in vogue right now but likely to fall by the wayside in fifty years)?  What gives a children’s book staying power?

It’s different from adult classics, which are often just an accepted part of the Western canon and appear again and again on high school and college reading lists to teach us about certain cultural and historical perspectives.  And that’s not to say that some children’s classics are not also on the academic list for important literary analysis, because they certainly are, but what makes them stay on the shelves just for a child’s enjoyment?

For example, a book that I am always eager to show children and their parents is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.  I had a hardcover copy of this book when I was a child and distinctly remember my parents reading it to me quite often.  And though I consider this book a classic, it’s not as if it’s very old.  Maurice Sendak is still alive, and Where the Wild Things Are was first published in 1963.  That’s not so long ago.  Not like, say, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden which was first published in 1910 and lives in children’s classics along with Sendak’s work.

Philip Pullman’s (author of His Dark Materials) publisher David Fickling (in a 2007 Times article )”says that his definition of a classic is ‘rereadability.’ ‘Plenty of books are enjoyable to read once, but with a classic, the more you reread, the more comes out. It’s the same for all ages; there is that tone, that care with words, that control from the big picture down to individual sentences.'”

And I have to agree with Mr. Fickling on that, but I have to wonder if there’s not more to it than “rereadability.”  What about books that I read and loved as a child that would never be on the Western canon, but that I would certainly buy for my child to read for fun–books like The Baby Sitters Club series, R.L. Stine’s creepy collection of child-appropriate horror stories, and Bunnicula. Everyone in my elementary school enjoyed those books, and no one buys them now.  But who is to say that when my generation starts having children that they won’t come back in style?  I mean, I wouldn’t want my future child to miss out on vampire bunnies! That just wouldn’t be fair.

So what do you think makes a children’s classic?  What kid’s books have staying power with you? Or with your kids?

Just to start the conversation, I will say that some of my favorites are The Witches by Roald Dahl (1983), The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865 and 1871 respectively), The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961),  I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1949) and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937).  -Kaycie

Share