Avonlea Revisited: what children’s classics offer for adult readers | Books - Cherwell Online

Irene Zhang, Author at Cherwell meditates on the experience of rereading childhood stories as an adult, revealing what more can be gleaned from two classic favourites through an older pair of eyes. 

Avonlea Revisited: what children’s classics offer for adult readers

It is now consensus that children’s literature is a thoroughly valid field deserving of complex thought and serious considerations. I don’t claim to have consulted any academic sources before writing this; indeed, I probably should have. After all, I’ve been working over this long vacation as an online tutor for primary school students, whose parents are anxious to make use of this endless coronavirus summer and improve their children’s reading levels (or, let’s be honest, desperately in need of reasonably priced childcare).

For this reason, my reading over the summer has mostly composed of kids’ books. Initially this felt somewhat regressive: surely, as (half) an English student, I should be finally tackling Joyce or preparing for Shakespeare. However, after a month spent with Roald Dahl, E. B. White and L. M. Montgomery, I am now a humble advocate for returning to our childhood favourites: these stories’ well-known endings are soothing in our current predicament, offer intriguing intellectual dialogues that rival their adult counterparts, and are deeply revelatory in their explorations of the emergent self.
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Source: Cherwell Online