The Sunday Times Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2025 A Sunday Times Irish Times Financial
Times Independent Daily Mail TLS Economist Prospect Evening Standard and New
Statesman Book of the Year 2024 *The perfect Christmas gift for booklovers* 'A MARVEL'
PHILIP PULLMAN The stories we read as children matter a great deal. The best ones are
indelible in our memories reaching far beyond our childhoods they are a window into our
deepest hopes joys and anxieties. They reveal our past - collective and individual remembered
and imagined - and invite us to dream up different futures. In a pioneering history of the
children's literary canon The Haunted Wood reveals the magic of childhood reading from the
ancient tales of Aesop through the Victorian and Edwardian golden age to new classics.
Excavating the complex lives of our most beloved writers Sam Leith offers a humane portrait of
a genre and celebrates the power of books to inspire and console entire generations. ***
'A DELIGHT' JULIA DONALDSON 'A JOY' MICHAEL ROSEN 'GLORIOUSLY ENTERTAINING' TOM HOLLAND
