The journalist and author chooses his six favourite children’s books. His new book, "The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading", examining classics from Aesop to "Harry Potter", is out this week.
Peter Pan
Much, much wilder and stranger than Disney would have you believe, Barrie's original "Peter Pan" is dangerous, exciting and also, as his creator describes him, a "tragic boy". It's a complex and magical piece of work.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Available on The Week Bookshop
The Once and Future King
T.H. White, 1958
Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" pushed through White's bizarre sensibility. Radiantly well written, deeply moving, morally serious and wildly funny in the silliest ways possible, it's like nothing else.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Grinny
Nicholas Fisk, 1973
Weird sci-fi/ horror alien home-invasion fantasy. What if a Great Aunt Emma you'd never heard of turned up on the doorstep and said, "You remember me?" and your parents came over all weird and asked her to stay? It traumatised a generation.
Watership Down
Richard Adams, 1972
Adams’s bizarre but thrillingly successful book asks us to take the lives of rabbits as seriously as the lives of Homeric heroes. It’s gripping, punctiliously realistic about rabbit behaviour and biology (except for the, um, psychic one) – and the final page will break you.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Tom's Midnight Garden
Philippa Pearce, 1958
Heartbreaking time-slip novel about the friendship between a modern boy and the Victorian girl he meets when the clock strikes 13 and he finds himself wandering like a ghost through the formal garden that once stood where he’s living. "The Time Traveler’s Wife" for pre-teens.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Goodnight Moon
Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, 1947
On a skim, this postwar children’s picture book is a mimsy bedtime story about a bunny. But what’s going on with the vanishing and reappearing objects and figures? The more you examine it, the more you see. “Goodnight, nobody.”
Available on The Week Bookshop
-
Film reviews: ‘Send Help’ and ‘Private Life’Feature An office doormat is stranded alone with her awful boss and a frazzled therapist turns amateur murder investigator
-
Movies to watch in Februarythe week recommends Time travelers, multiverse hoppers and an Iraqi parable highlight this month’s offerings during the depths of winter
-
ICE’s facial scanning is the tip of the surveillance icebergIN THE SPOTLIGHT Federal troops are increasingly turning to high-tech tracking tools that push the boundaries of personal privacy
-
Film reviews: ‘Send Help’ and ‘Private Life’
Feature An office doormat is stranded alone with her awful boss and a frazzled therapist turns amateur murder investigator
-
February’s new movies jump from rehab facilities to 1990s Iraq to a maybe apocalypse
the week recommends Time travelers, multiverse hoppers and an Iraqi parable highlight this month’s offerings during the depths of winter
-
Exploring Vilnius, the green-minded Lithuanian capital with endless festivals, vibrant history and a whole lot of pink soupThe Week Recommends The city offers the best of a European capital
-
The best fan fiction that went mainstreamThe Week Recommends Fan fiction websites are a treasure trove of future darlings of publishing
-
The Beckhams: the feud dividing BritainIn the Spotlight ‘Civil war’ between the Beckhams and their estranged son ‘resonates’ with families across the country
-
6 homes with incredible balconiesFeature Featuring a graceful terrace above the trees in Utah and a posh wraparound in New York City
-
The 8 best hospital dramas of all timethe week recommends From wartime period pieces to of-the-moment procedurals, audiences never tire of watching doctors and nurses do their lifesaving thing
-
The Flower Bearers: a ‘visceral depiction of violence, loss and emotional destruction’The Week Recommends Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ ‘open wound of a memoir’ is also a powerful ‘love story’ and a ‘portrait of sisterhood’
