They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.” Both as a reader of them and as a writer of them, I have never considered “children’s books” a separate category of literature: The best children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise, shining a sidewise gleam on the fundamental questions we live with, articulating in the language of children, which is the language of great simplicity and great profundity, the most complex truths about being human. But reducing a lifetime of reading to just twenty favorite books to mark twenty years of The Marginalian was so tortuously hard that I am sneaking in another twenty under the dubious label “children’s.” — Published October 25, 2026 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/10/25/20-childrens-books/ — The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses.
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