One of the great things about owning a book is that you get to underline things that you want to remember. From time to time I go through my books just to remind myself of notes in the margins and things I’ve underlined. Here are a few things I underlined in my copy of the collection of some of Lewis’ essays on stories, relating to age-oriented writing and reading:
I never met the Wind in the Willows or the Bastable books till I was in my late twenties, and I do not think I have enjoyed them any the less on that account. i am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz (C.S. Lewis, On Stories, p. 33).
Next,
Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up (Ibid, p. 34).
And,
…It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then (Ibid, p. 48).
