Customer Reviews

Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood

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Maria Tatar's "Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood" is an engaging read, and does not resort to heavy-handed use of language nor a boorish academic tone to make it's point. This made it highly appealing to me and I found a lot of useful insights into the powerful impact of stories upon children.

Chapter One: Reading Them to Sleep [Storytelling and the Invention of Bedtime Reading] explores the various facets of storytelling and bedtime reading. Chapter Two: Beauty, Horror, and Ignition Power [Can Books Change Us?} looks at narrative techniques, especially on reader's fascination with the macabre and horrific. Chapter Three: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep [Brushes with Death] explores the theme of death in children's books. Chapter Four: The Magic Art of the Great Humbug [How to do Things with Words] explores how words and thoughts as expressed in various children's literary works, have the power to affect children. Chapter Five: Theaters for the Imagination [What words can do to you] also explores the power of literature on children.

My major criticism of this book is in the lack of comprehensive representation of major children's authors [which I admit is difficult under the constraints of space etc] or authors whose works have had significant impact on children [e.g. Enid Blyton whose works had a huge impact on me as a child, Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit tales etc.]

I loved the Appendix which had a compilation taken from the works of noted authors on how books have a transformative power [e.g. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Graham Greene, Eudora Welty, Gustave Flaubert, and many more]. There is an extensive Notes section as well as Bibliography, and an Index.

On the whole, I gained a couple of useful insights into the pull of literature and it's impact on children. It definitely makes the case for reading to children, something I'm passionate about. I feel this book is valuable to parents, teachers, librarians and anyone involved/interested in encouraging reading in children.

Lively presentation that focuses on techniques used to draw children into fantasy worlds. Begins with bedtime reading and how it started and discusses importance of dark and light themes in children's literature. Not at all Freudian, and I appreciated the fact that the author did not try to read things into books that children do not see and showed respect for the books discussed. Liked the sections on Charlotte's Web, Cat in the Hat, and Peter Pan in particular. Wanted to see more on books for older children.

A valuable book for scholars and the intellectually inclined parent, "Enchanted Hunters" is Maria Tatar's best offering to date. Sliding sideways from her solid scholarship on the fairy tales, Tatar has entered the field of Children's Literature Studies by means of the topic of reading and done something original and precedent setting. Those ready to go beyond the orthodoxy of the Jacqueline Rose Cult will find here new ways of examining childhood experience, as well as the perfect pitch of an authorial voice that is warm and personal. In literary scholarship, this book is the equivalent of the perfect string quartet.

This book takes up a question that has not received much attention among those who write about children's literature. How do children read and what do they get out of the process? Since the clipboard method does not work effectively with children, Tatar looks at adult recollections and tries to make sense of them. And she also studies the stories that have taken hold and tries to understand their appeal. This is not a history of childhood reading, but a new critical perspective that looks at effects.

I am a big fan of Maria Tatar's work, but this book didn't really impress me. I didn't find any of the ideas she discussed terribly interesting or consequential. Her theories about the meaning of reading bedtime stories left me wondering "So what?"