The best, most enduring children's literature often has an anarchic, befuddling formal quality. It appears to embrace the structures of the lesser works that kids are immersed in, and then smashes them for no obvious reason.
https://twitter.com/lauraeweymouth/status/1487145418605608971
Goodnight Moon is my favorite example of this. On its surface, it's a narrator listing the stuff that's in a room, then saying good night to each thing. The soil from which a zillion anodyne board books have sprung.
But hold the lists in Goodnight Moon up against each other, and you discover that they're not parallel at all. They clang and slip and bounce around in ways no modern editor would ever allow.
It's profoundly discombobulating, once you notice it. But I think kids love the book because of that, not in spite of it. (And I believe Margaret Wise Brown knew exactly what she was doing. She was an extraordinarily meticulous writer.)
Chilhood is chaotic and terrifying, and the best children's authors understand that.
https://twitter.com/lauraeweymouth/status/1487147964992823297
But hell, don't take my word for it. Listen to the master. studentactivism.tumblr.com/post/226537457…
My favorite page in all of Dr. Seuss is about this, too: 
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
