• Crooked House gets all Shelby Foote on the Fairy Tale War of the ’20s and ’30s, a period when librarians went mano y mano in a heated debate over whether kids’ lit should go mimetic or stay magical. A dark yet heady time: Warhorses ranged on one side of the battlefield, centaurs and unicorns on the other; the fierce yet oddly hushed clash of battle …
If you’re interested, Natalie Reif Ziarnik’s From School and Public Libraries: Developing the Natural Alliance provides more background on the debate (see pages 10-14). If you’re not interested, then I recommend pegging back to Crooked House for a discussion of “The Road as parenting book.”
• “The Wild Swans” by Hans Christian Andersen.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
