oh my word just look at the contents page to the norton anthology of children's literature. isn't it simply scrumptious?

alphabet poems, school primers, fables, riddles, fairy tales, science fiction, nonsense poems, comics, picture books, verse for children, retellings and adaptations, lullabies, songs, plays, manuals, full-length texts (including the phoenix and the carpet and from the mixed-up files of mrs. basil E. frankweiler). i'm ashamed i've never even thought of primers and alphabet poems as subjects of study, although they're obvious candidates, aren't they?

i saw it in harvard book store a month ago - but it was slipcased and plastic-wrapped so you couldn't look inside - and it was seventy-five dollars so i thought, nonsense, i wouldn't spend that much on an anthology, and forgot about it. but then (and i'm ever so pleased!) dependable as always this christmas as with every other a card arrives from jenny g, my friend of the swamp alligators in louisiana. jenny is a professor of victorian and children's literature and i love it when she talks shop to me - she asked if i had seen the new anthology, and that made me remember and google it. splendid isn't it? oh i don't want to mess about with shakespeare and dickens anymore - give me the children's poetry and colour illustrations!