I recently found, in a cupboard, a book that my father used regularly to read to me when I was a very young child. The book in question was There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss - a story about a young boy living in a house, apparently alone but for a collection of quirky monster-like creatures. An inscription on the inside front cover indicates that it was a present for me on my fourth birthday.
Prior to finding it in the cupboard I had not thought of that book for a very long time. Memories emerged as I read through it once again, delighting in those mysterious characters with nonsensical names. I'd like to use my rediscovery of the book as an occasion for three observations.
Firstly, and perhaps most crucially: never underestimate the importance of reading to children. Certain aspects of the experience, in particular the idiosyncrasies which each reader brings to the text, will likely stay with them for the rest of their lives. For example, there is a page in Wocket where the young protagonist finds 'the Tellar and the Nellar and the Gellar and the Dellar and the Bellar and the Wellar and the Zellar in the Cellar'. My father always used to speed up when he got to this bit, and I have never forgotten the excitement I felt upon approaching this part of the story. This may seem rather twee and trivial, but it really isn't: these sorts of memories help shape who we are.
The second observation is this: when I read through the book once again, I enjoyed it no less than I did as a child. In a world of so many intricacies and intractabilities I found the experience of this simple, rhyming story, with its endearing illustrations, immensely liberating. Now I'm not suggesting that adults toss aside The Financial Times and Anna Karenina and start reading Dr. Seuss; what I'm suggesting rather is that all of these can have their place in an adult's repertoire. Despite the fact that they are marketed at children, such books can nonetheless be embraced by adults as a form of therapeutic escapism from the 'real world'. Adults could well benefit from accessing the part of them that never really grew up.
But of course adults do have different insights to children, and this is where my third observation comes in: children's texts - many of the good ones, anyway - are multilayered, and things which went unnoticed as a child can be picked up as an adult. I am obviously not the first person to make this observation, but rediscovering Wocket brought it home to me. For example, I remember, as a child, being vaguely conscious of the fact that the protagonist in the story appeared to live in a house with no adults (at least, no adult is mentioned, and no indication is made within the text or illustrations that the boy lives with any). But re-reading the story I was struck by how truly odd this was, and the book took on a sense of loneliness. I even started to feel that the various creatures the boy lives with may be manifestations of a fractured, paranoid mind. Now I'm sure I'm guilty of ridiculous eisegesis here, but my point is not to interpret the text; rather, it is to indicate once again that adults can gain new insights by reading books that are ostensibly 'for children'.
Obviously a lot of children's literature is pretty facile, and unworthy of the kind of discussion I have afforded Dr. Seuss here. But next time you are in the children's section of a bookshop, search for something you remember from your childhood, give it another read, and see what happens.
