Tag Archives: Sam Leith

The Haunted Wood by Sam Leith is a survey of childhood reading from Aesop to J. K. Rowling. With a focus on British children’s literature, Leith examines how ideals of what childhood should look like have shifted over the years and how that has been reflected in books aimed at younger readers. Leith’s excellent pen portraits of various children’s authors show that the majority seem to have had some sort of major trauma in their life. Some like Roald Dahl are already well-known, but I didn’t know that E. Nesbit had had such a terrible time of it. The chapter about Harry Potter neatly shows how many homages to children’s books are contained in the series and Leith’s analysis of the delights of picture books are a particular joy. There are inevitable gaps even in a very long book, particularly because the topic of childhood reading is almost always discussed from a personal angle, but the broad span of The Haunted Wood makes it very pacy and enjoyably nostalgic to read. Continue reading →