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Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise written and read by Katherine Rundell.
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A pocket-sized, unmissable essay on the importance of children's literature by the bestselling and award-winning author, Katherine Rundell.
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'It’s a very short book but it packs a real punch... A real delight' – Financial Times

'Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power whose novels will be read, cherished and reread long after most so-called “serious” novels are forgotten' – Observer

'Rundell's pen is gold-tipped' – Sunday Times
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Katherine Rundell – Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and prize-winning author of five novels for children – explores how children’s books ignite, and can re-ignite, the imagination; how children's fiction, with its unabashed emotion and playfulness, can awaken old hungers and create new perspectives on the world. This delightful and persuasive essay is for adult readers.

Critics Review

Read everything she writes
Daily Mail
A winning polemic about how reading a children’s book can remind us of the need to see things from different perspectives
i Weekend
Rundell's pen is gold-tipped
Sunday Times
Rundell is now unarguably in the first rank
Philip Pullman on The Explorer
As an unashamed lover and reader of children's literature, I adored Katherine Rundell's Why You Should Read Children's Books ... [it's] time to remind yourself of the reason you fell in love with books and reading in the first place
Observer New Review
It’s a very short book but it packs a real punch. Rundell makes an irresistible case and reminds you of the wonder and excitement of reading, discovering and learning. She is a brilliant and ferocious communicator; I found her use of language and some of her tropes thrilling and fascinating and enormously generative. A real delight
FT readers’ best books of 2019 Financial Times
Children's author Katherine Rundell is a fellow in English Literature at Oxford so she knows how to put an argument together. Here, she delivers a winning polemic about how reading a children's book can remind us of the need to see things from different perspectives
i Weekend
The Costa Award-winning children’s author makes an impassioned case for adults to continue reading children’s books. She explains what they can teach us, including kindness and courage, risk-taking and morality.
Sunday Express S Magazine
Just delicious
Observer New Review
Author Katherine Rundell
Narrator Katherine Rundell
Duration 44 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781526616067
Format Audiobook
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre Children’s and teenage literature studies: general, Gift books, Literary essays
Availability AU, GB, IE

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