Maria Popova's 7 Obscure Children's Books by Authors of Grown-Up Literature at Brain Pickings offered a fantastic look at the way some masters of language—Joyce, Twain, Woolf, Eliot, Shelley, Tolstoy, and Wilde—crafted offerings for younger readers. (If we were to add later twentieth-century novelists to the list, I'd suggest John Gardner's Dragon, Dragon, which, as Popova says of Tolstoy, exhibits a similarly "profound respect and appreciation for children’s unique creative and moral sensibilities, as well as his dedication to the broader aspirations of education." Read the piece and see some other excellent additions by commenters.)—Laura
I’m always fascinated by things like ...