05/19/2026
When adults read children’s books, they recover “a way of moving through the world with a little more curiosity, a little less certainty, and a greater willingness to be surprised,” Rafaela Jinich writes. In The Wonder Reader, she gathers a collection of stories about what it means to read and revisit this literature. https://theatln.tc/MehLSf0o
Recently, Anna Holmes wrote about moving across the country and donating boxes of adult literary classics—but refusing to part with the children’s books she owned. Those stories, Holmes explained, were not just sentimental objects; they preserved a way of engaging with the world that adulthood trains out of many of us.
“Children approach stories with a flexibility that many adults lose: They tolerate nonsense and accept strange rules, as long as the story can delight them,” Jinich writes. “As adults, we often replace that openness with efficiency and skepticism, flattening delight into something more practical.”
Read more stories about children’s literature, including Holmes’s essay, and sign up for The Wonder Reader, a guide to new and classic Atlantic stories, published every Saturday, at the link.
🎨: 1. Martin Parr / Magnum. 2. Kevin VQ Dam. 3. Elliot Kruszynski.
