Children's Literature Really?

​By Veena Deo, originally published in the September 2025 issue of the 1666 Coffman Newsletter

Many of us book lovers grew up reading or being read-to—folk tales, fables, and allegorical poems always restoring a balance in our mind and confidence that things can right themselves in the world with a bit of courage and heroic intervention. They have taught us how to live, how to be good, and how to avoid hurting others. Our Library is chock full of books for readers of all ages, including children’s literature, that work for us at any time in our lives. 

​Indulge me for giving you a personal account of my turning to children’s literature every so often amidst reading hefty histories and serious books. I know many of us turn to mysteries too, for a bit of lighter fare. After my heart surgery I found it difficult to focus my​

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attention for quite a while. Everything tired me out. A gentle friend from Coffman offered to read to me. I asked for children’s literature, and she kindly offered it. Winnie the Pooh and Little Bitty Raindrop delighted me. More than anything the tone of voice and language in the stories offered me solace and healing. Indeed, stories heal and sustain our faith in values we know to live by.

So, some friends and I have continued the reading-out-aloud tradition with children’s literature with tea and treats every so often and have loved it. Books, company, tea, delight in language, puns, important questions asked and answered by tiny animals through allegory, a discussion of what makes writers like Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, Kate DiCamillo, J.M Barrie, E.B. White, and others turn to producing fantasy tales are an absolute treat.

Coffman Library has a small collection of children/teens literature, including picture books. Those of us with grandchildren are familiar with the collection. I’d like to highlight a couple of children’s and teens’ books that might find you delighted when you want a break from the news of the day and/or are feeling down.

Sir Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) was his first book written for his son, Zafar, after the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa (edict) around the Islamic world of believers to assassinate him for writing his fifth book, The Satanic Verses (1988), understood as blasphemy against Islam. His life was threatened by a young assassin born after The Satanic Verses was published with a near-fatal stabbing at an event in the Chautauqua Institution in 2022, about which he wrote Knife. He has never been able to shake that fatwa off his shoulders even though the current ayatollah has decided not to enforce it. When he was most vulnerable personally, in hiding and under protection from the British secret service, he wrote to connect with his son through storytelling. Critics have called it a classic folktale where the hero travels to strange lands to lift a curse and save someone (his parents in this case). A Booker Prize winner, Rushdie writes in many genres, including children’s books, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories is one of them. Haroun is a twelve-year-old boy whose mother leaves home; his father, an extraordinary storyteller, feels guilty and loses his art of storytelling. Haroun desires to restore his father’s loss of talent and bring his mother back. Forgiveness and restoration of normalcy is the goal for young Haroun. It must have been Rushdie’s own desire as well. The book is funny, the language is delightful, and it captures the essence of Arabian Nights as well as The Wizard of Oz. The primary battle is between freedom of speech and enforced silence; between light/color and darkness/night–-a topic that might feel extremely relevant for us today.

Kate Di Camillo’s The Tale of Despereaux (2003), her third book, won a Newberry medal in 2004. She is one of seven writers who have won the medal twice. It is the gripping tale of a tiny mouse who suffers because he is different from his siblings, and hence, abandoned by everyone. As always, he must learn the rules of his culture and his group who punish him for doing something he is not supposed to do: go anywhere near the king or the princess. He is sent to a dark dungeon where the rats live and who want to manipulate and destroy mice and humans living in the castle. DiCamillo’s literary device is what we find in Rushdie’s tale as well: a battle between light and dark ensues. The unlikely hero succeeds after considerable turns in the plot. The people in power, such as the king and the hero’s parents and adult members of his tribe, must all seek forgiveness for their immoral behavior before things return to a balance between good and evil. The book has been received well by critics and readers alike despite those parents who prefer not to see topics like abandonment, parental abuse, and grief addressed at all. Other parents have argued that the reality of life is important. The need for children to see what they observe in their own lives in school and at home is important. DiCamillo’s narrator is particularly good at asking questions and allowing little readers to learn how to overcome their fears. She even addresses the typical folktale expectation of happily-ever-after with great nuance and sensitivity. It was wonderful to see her walk her young readers through emotional pitfalls so that the end feels satisfying and good. Critics have said that she herself suffered emotional abuse at home, and this writing is a way to work through her own healing.

These are certainly books not to be dismissed. They get at serious concerns, come out of individual experiences, and both educate and entertain–the goal of all literature, isn’t it? You might want to pick up one of them just to give yourself a little break.