Life can be operatic for the kinder-set. There is brooding and bewilderment, anxiety and injustice. Hearts are shattered on a regular basis. Is it any wonder young children cry lavishly several times a day?
As a children’s writer, I believe there is a time to be pleasant and optimistic but there is also a time to affirm the emotional wilderness and Sartrean mindset of the young. In the spirit of the latter, I made a list of books for and about the wondrously woeful and willful. I called it “7 Gloriously Gloomy Books for the Very Young” and you can read it in the newly revised THE BOOK OF LISTS.
(From Aldo by John Burningham)
