Why Children’s Books are for Grownups too?

I am a firm supporter for children’s book and literacy in young kids. My experience with children’s book when I was younger was just fantastic. I loved them. So, in order to help promote children’s love for children’s book, I bought mini-sized chairs and painted them bright colors to welcome and encourage reading among the youth. Now, only if that space was also for adults as well. As a young adult now, it is embarrassing to walk through the children’s book aisle. However, like Katherine Rundell points out in “Why Children’s Books Are for Grownups too?”, children’s books have “great, sustaining truths to which we can return” to and make sense of the complicated real world. There is much one can learn form children’s book. One of my English high school teachers agreed wholeheartedly with this notion. Occasionally, she would read us a children’s book and link it to the current piece we were reading, whether it’d be a heavy historical fiction novel or a Shakespearean play. For example, when reading Grapes of Wrath, my teacher read us the Where the Wild Things Are to help us understand the feelings of adventure and the unknown experienced by the Joad family. These complicated reads, although not for children, are still heavily based on the values we learned from children’s book. Children’s book taught us to enjoy books, so why can’t we go back to them so we can enjoy reading again. With less and less people reading books every day, the idea of children’s book are for grown-ups too must take off and be accepted. Go take a walk in the children’s book aisle again and rediscover what it is to be a child again.