Childrens literature

Because children suck at it.

>Why do adults write children's stories?

Often because their own childhood sucked ass, actually.
A.A. Milne's father died when he was 12.
Hans Christian Andersen's father died when he was 9.
Lewis Carroll's mother died when he was 18.
Mark Twain's father died when he was 11.
Lucy Maud Montgomery's mother died when she was almost 2.
Kenneth Grahame's mother died when he was 5.
Roald Dahl's father died when he was 3.
P.L. Travers's father died when she was 7.
C.S. Lewis's mother died when he was 9.
Lucy M. Boston's father died when she was 6.
Frances Hodgson Burnett's father died when she was 3.
When you look behind a children's classic, you very often find a lost childhood. It isn't always a dead parent--J.M. Barrie's loss of his older brother (who was 13) when Barrie was 6 cast a deep shadow on his life, as did Rudyard Kipling's exile from India to abusive stepparents when he was 5--but it is prevalent enough that whenever I look at a great author now, I ask "Why did you write a book for children?" and there is often the beginning of an answer in the author's own broken early life.

>>8500224
>What are the best childrens authors?

Roald Dahl without a doubt, when I was a kid I read all of his books like 4 times each, such a great man.

>>8501697
>18
>childhood

>>8502013
Fine, fine. The rest of them aren't good enough to make the point? Or must we disqualify Milne as well, my little pedant?

>>8500224
>books on the philosophies of children's stories?
Vladimir Propp was a Russian formalist critic who studied the narrative elements of fairy tales. Pretty applicable though not necessarily a philosophy of children's lit.

Kenneth Koch and Jack Collum are both poets who have done a lot of work engaging children with poetry. For Kenneth Koch I'd recommend reading the introduction to Rose Where Did You Get That Red? and for Collum I recommend the essays included in his book Poetry Everywhere and the entirety of Moving Windows.

Finally Louise Rosenblatt is an example of a 'philosopher' of children's literature. Her books were really influential on the understanding of the reading process as well as the ways in which literature is used in pedagogy. Kathy Short would be a more contemporary person to check out, though probably too academic to be of much interest.