gag

Every child goes through many phases of development, each phase with its own needs and interests. I know I should feel bitterly cheated if, as a child, I had been deprived of all fairy lore; and it does not seem to me that we have the right to deprive any child of its rightful heritage of Fairyland. In fact, I believe it is just the modern children who need it, since their lives are already overbalanced on the side of steel and stone and machinery - and nowadays, one might well add, bombs, gas-masks and machine guns. (Wanda Gág, "I Like Fairy Tales," in The Horn Book [1939], quoted in Jack Zipes, Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter, p. 94).