When Adults Pick Up Children's Books

I remember a story--though I have forgotten its teller--of a young man who was rather depressed. He went to the doctor to find a cure for his ailments. The doctor, however, rather than offering him an injection or pill or some such nonsense, looked at the young man and asked, "What have you been reading lately?" After hearing the young man's abysmally post-modern list of dark and dreary reads, he recommended a few favorites of his own. Mostly children's books. These, he thought, would cure the young man. And cure him they did. 

We are never too old for children's books. They remind us of our natures, of an innocence lost. They remind us that "unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Children's books humanize the sophisticate and the barbarian alike, bringing both closer to the golden mean of reality. That is why we read children's books. 

This evening I picked up Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and was delighted by the author's preface, which explained:

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

Exactly. This is why we pick up children’s books—so we can set aside the pencil and the notebook for but a moment so we can sit and enjoy the simplest of things. 

This is why, through the council of some dear friends, I have decided that the first book I shall read as a married man (coming soon in 50 days) is The Wind in the Willows. I have never read it before. Yet it seems to be one of those “queer enterprises” of which Twain speaks. I hope it will prepare me well, for marriage, too, may prove to be such an enterprise.