Books Received

The Fourth Pig. By Naomi Mitchison. Introduction by Marina Warner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Part of Princeton’s Oddly Modern Fairy Tales series, this new edition introduces contemporary readers to the witty fairy tales, poems, and ballads of Scottish writer Naomi Mitchison. This collection originally appeared in 1936.

How Did Long John Silver Lose his Leg? And Twenty-Six Other Mysteries of Children’s Literature. By Dennis Butts and Peter Hunt. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2013.

Drawing on their encyclopedic knowledge of children’s literature, the authors provide readers with the inside story on many classic works of children’s literature. They begin most of their twenty-seven chapters by posing tantalizing questions, such as “How did Mary get to Misselthwaite Manor?” or “Exactly how big was the little house in the big woods?” They then go on to answer these questions, and along the way shed light on the lives of children’s authors and the social history of children’s literature. Inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. By Lucy Mangan. Foreword by Sophie Dahl. New York: Puffin Books, 2014. This lavishly illustrated book traces the history of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from its earliest drafts through its incarnations as films and theatrical productions. The author also examines the critical and political responses to Dahl’s book.

Old Three Toes and Other Tales of Survival and Extinction. By John Joseph Mathews. Edited and afterword by Susan Kalter. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015.

Part of a series titled American Indian Literature and Critical Studies, this collection brings together nine short stories by Osage author John Joseph Mathews. Written fifty years ago with boy readers in mind, these stories celebrate nature, animals, and the American landscape. In her afterword, the editor provides biographical information about Mathews and discusses the various reasons why these stories went unpublished for so many years.

Walt Disney, from Reader to Storyteller: Essays on the Literary Inspirations. Edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.

The seventeen essays in this volume explore the various ways in which Walt Disney responded to children’s literature. Examples include Lucy Rollin, “Pinocchio: An American Commedia”; Judy Rosenbaum, “Updating Pollyanna for the Space Age”; and Paula Connolly, “The Metafictive Playgrounds of Disney’s Winnie the Pooh: The Movie Is a Book.”