I loved this book! I am a kindergarten teacher who teaches little kids to read because reading is one of my favorite things in life. This is an exploration of the history of telling stories to children. From around the hearth with the whole family to today - where is a bedtime story is a battle to get them to sleep. She explores themes in popular classic children's novels and what makes them irresistible to children.

I would recommend this book to those of us who have loved reading since we were children. Be warned you will want to go back and analyze your favorite books as a child. ( )

I found this to be a fascinating book, I didn't learn anything I hadn't known before, but it did make me look at how other people look at reading and readers a bit differently.

Well I did read one thing I hadn't known. Apparently there are people who find negative messages in Goodnight Moon of all things....

It's always a dicey thing when adults try to assume they know how and why children react they way they do to things, especially something as internalized and intimate as reading, but the author did a good job of not coming down on one side or the other in this book, she just used other opinions and examples to show the different points of view on this.

I really enjoyed how she explored and explained the changes and evolution of books for children, we used to read some truly nasty things to them, and I really enjoyed her more detailed look at the classics such as Alice In Wonderland and Dr. Seuss's books, showing not only why they worked, but how they changed children's literature and why people find them so threatening. ( )

An exploration of why stories matter so much to children - how they shape our lives, how their themes inform our youthful sensibilities. Tatar also examines the historical phenomenon of adults reading to children (specifically but not entirely limited to bedtime reading). She uses examples with wide appeal, designed to evoke memories in her readers of their own childhood reading (entirely successfully in my case). Somewhat specialized, but absolutely fascinating in its look at how powerful reading can be to the young. ( )