SOURCE: Bolle, Sonja. Review of Don't Tell the Grown-Ups, by Alison Lurie. Los Angeles Times Book Review (11 March 1990): 6.

In the following review, Bolle praises Don't Tell the Grown-Ups for Lurie's interesting opposition to feminists who dismiss fairy tales as patronizing to women.

“There exists in our world an unusual, partly savage tribe, ancient and widely distributed, yet, until recently little studied by anthropologists or historians. All of us were at one time members of this tribe; we knew its customs, manners and rituals, its folklore and sacred texts. I refer, of course, to children,” writes novelist and English professor Alison Lurie in this collection of essays on children's literature [Don't Tell the Grown-Ups]. There are two kinds of children's books, she asserts: improving and subversive. The latter category constitutes the texts her “partly savage tribe” holds sacred.

And rightly so, Lurie maintains. She remembers discovering very early on...