Review:
"From the moment I picked up Wild Things, I couldn't put it down--I only wish the book were ten times longer. It was a joy to learn more about so many of my favorite masterpieces of children's literature." --Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
"A wonderfully entertaining tour of a dozen gems from Goodnight Moon to Charlotte's Web. Full of humor and insight, Wild Things in its evocation of our young reading lives is also as poignant as some of the masterpieces it celebrates. I loved it." --Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier
"A spirited, perceptive, and just outright funny account of reading childhood favorites through adult eyes . . . Handy's breezy, friendly style lends the book a bright feeling, as of old friends discussing old friends, and this book will surely leave its readers with a new appreciation for childhood favorites." --Publishers Weekly
"Highly engaging . . . The author demonstrates a deep love of children's literature and a keen understanding of the ways in which reapproaching beloved texts can highlight the connections and differences between a child's perception and adult reality. As well-researched as it is seamlessly composed, this book entertains as it educates." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Brilliant, revelatory, and endlessly entertaining. I've read these books a thousand times, but only now do I finally understand them." --Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians trilogy
"A terrific rumpus of a journey into the world of illustrated and young reader classics . . . Wild Things makes a convincing case for reading children's books as an adult." --The A.V. Club
"A charming, discursive encounter with classic children's literature from the perspective of a parent . . . Mr. Handy writes with zip, sincerity, and good humor. . . For parents who are embarking on this phase of rediscovery, for those in the thick of it, and for those for whom it is a warm and recent memory, Wild Things will be a delightful excursion. . . . It is also engaging and full of genuine feeling, and I liked it very much." --Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal
"Consistently intelligent and funny . . . The book succeeds wonderfully. . . . The Handy children's appearances are brief but disproportionately memorable. Just as almost all kids' books, with their frequent appearances by talking animals, are part emotional masquerade, Wild Things, too, is in disguise. It reads as a companionable romp through all the stories you sometimes tire of reading to your own children. But like The Runaway Bunny, it's really a gently obsessive tale, a man gathering up so many words and ideas as if to create a magical stay against his own children growing up." --Rivka Galchen, The New York Times Book Review
"Nothing less than a Golden Ticket into the Whipple-Scrumptious world of children's classics, where mystical and marvelous surprises await . . . Literary criticism through the prism of memoir, Wild Things is a read--a ride!--of pure pleasure." --Vanity Fair
"Wild Things is relaxed, discursive, and personal. . . . The result is very pleasing to read. . . . Handy quotes liberally from each book he admires, and he curates those passages beautifully, allowing readers both literary pleasure and a kind of time travel. His analyses are affectionate and often eccentric. He's got a magpie's eye for odd and shiny details. . . . His foray into children's literature allowed him more than a simple chance to re-encounter the favorite books of his youth. It allowed him the chance to hold close his children's younger selves. 'By one measure, I suppose, ' he writes, 'you are holding in your hands a work of sublimated grief.' How beautiful, and how painful, and how incontrovertibly true." --The New York Times
About the Author:
Bruce Handy is currently a contributing editor of Vanity Fair. A former writer and editor at Spy and Time, his articles, essays, reviews, and humor pieces have appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, New York magazine, Rolling Stone, Vogue, The Village Voice, and The New Yorker. Handy was nominated for an Emmy in 1993 as a member of Saturday Night Live's writing staff. He won a GLAAD Award in 1998 for his "Yep I'm Gay" Time cover profile of Ellen DeGeneres. At Vanity Fair, he has written on topics and personalities as diverse as Mad Men, Amy Schumer, film composer John Barry, PeeWee Herman, Miley Cyrus, the J.T. Leroy hoax, Cinerama, and the history of flight attendants. A native of California and a graduate of Stanford University, Handy lives in Manhattan with his wife, novelist Helen Schulman, and their two children. Wild Things is his first book.
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