When people around me are raising their benchmarks higher for their love interests to match, or looking for an adventure beyond what countryside and woods have to offer, I, surprisingly, find myself drawn more and more to Children’s Literature. Skimming through the pages and realizing how much can I just learn from reading them. Imagination beyond any boundaries and ideas afar from the world we live in, for a 20-year-old, I shouldn’t be enthralled in reading them, but I am.

I have been reading Children’s Literature for a few years now, but I’m enlisting the best of all. Books I enjoyed reading the most, learned from them, and love them all too much.

Backstories and reasons why I picked them up, some memorable moments associated with them too.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Here, I am, penning down my experience of reading and loving books written for kids. My love affair started off the night I first read, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.Pragmatically speaking, the story and characters are fictitious but the lessons couldn’t be more on point, more real. Naïvely accepting, they deserve all of the admiration and love from us.This was my first children’s book as a teen and I was astonished to the point where I wanted everyone to read it once.As a tradition, I now read it on the 1st of January, every year. And believe me, when I say, it has always been a delight and opens up new perspectives for me to reflect.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

With all of my heart, do I love this book.

Why do I recommend it?

The Little Prince is a story that starts off melancholic, but throughout the plot, never does it lose focus from the life-lessons and the satire aimed at grown-ups.Life is not a bed of roses, but occasionally, thorns do prick out foot, blood oozes out, and we feel the pain. With these lessons embedded deep in the story, and the idea behind working hard. The perseverance life and people devoted to us ask from us, and our will to continue; is pictured beautifully in the book.

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Matilda is a book that I earnestly, immensely adore, and she is a girl I look up to.Matilda was recommended to me by a friend saying that I am a split-image of her. I was in 12th grade. And I gave it a try.Until then, I had already found my passion for books but she gave me the long-sought validation my mind required: That it is alright if you find yourself diving into the world of books and not following the societal rules. It is within us the power and courage to fight, and can only be unleashed if we have the will to.

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

Why do I recommend it?

Matilda is every bibliophile out there. Anyone looking out for a book about reading, how society has been disapproving them for centuries now, and how persistent readers have been in their reading endeavor.Anyone in search for a little bit of magic, joy and a feel-good book, this is the book for them.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

When lockdown happened last year, I decided to re-immerse myself in books till the world doesn’t stop burning down. To my utter joy, I read this book with a fellow bibliophile, with him singing the songs of Oompa-Loompas out aloud.We did impressions and tried, failed doing an English accent. We rolled on our beds while reading but never did we stop intonating our voices.I realized just how much do I enjoy poems in rhymes and rhythms, and Mr. Willy Wonka’s chocolates made us crave for more. Dahl’s imagination always leaves an impression in our minds and just how hilarious can he get.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,Go throw your TV set away,And in its place you can installA lovely bookshelf on the wall.Then fill the shelves with lots of books.

Why do I recommend it?

Roald Dahl has oozed out his rhymes, not only to please the reader, but to bring out the destructive habits we all have been inculcating in our lives. Alongside us, the lives of our offspring.He witty and taunting songs, lines and scenarios, all force readers to reflect on the daily lives. How wrong they all have been living. And how have turned blind to the obvious of solutions.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne

I don’t remember watching Winnie-the-Pooh on television when I was young, I was just too occupied with Tom and Jerry.Last year, a week before my birthday, I decided to accomplish a ‘Perfect Week’, i.e. a book a day for a week. I read some amazing books that week and one of them was Winnie-the-Pooh.Winnie-the-Pooh is honest to heart, innocence oozing out with every sentence that I read. Each filled with love and joy, each giving me hope to go on. Plus, it has songs in rhymes!

‘Pooh, how do you spell love?’

‘You don’t spell love, Piglet. You feel it.’

It is filled with quotes and quotes that I would love to quote to others.

Why do I recommend it?

Winnie-the-Pooh is for kids as well as for adults who are in dire need of an escape from the brutality world has offered. Bedtime stories so you can roam around with Winnie, and watery mouth every time he mentions his honey, and his unbridled love for it.Not only that, it is a story of friendship, teaching us long-lost lessons, again.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Sooner or later, I get into my reading slump. Sometimes, it is the surrounding that squeezes out every desire of mine to read, and mostly, because I have a huge TBR which I fail to keep up with. I was in one when turning blind eye to the big stack of TBR, I decided to read a feel-good book, and it has been proven to me time and again that Children’s Literature helps me the most.There is a chapter that I vividly remember of The Secret Garden that reminded me that even if the whole world denies the existence and effects of Magic; Magic is within us. Helping us, raising us, believing in us, if we believe in it. Magic doesn’t necessarily have to be about Latin spells and hand movements, but the power of belief and faith. Faith in what we wish for, patience for it to come true, and belief that it evidently, will.

“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”

Why do I recommend it?

This book is for 9 years old or older. It can be a bit long to be qualified as a book for children, but when the critical mind of us has been put on a halt, author’s intention seem pretty easy.This is a story of grief and hope, of bereaved and new born. This is a story for all.Concerning ourselves with magic and hope, is all what we, as adults look for. Praying the universe, gods to shower a blessing, bring about a miracle. Well, to tell you all something, miracle is belief and belief is miracle.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

All Alone!Whether you like it or not,Alone will be somethingyou’ll be quite a lot.

This was my first encounter with a kids’ book being so grim, and so upfront about it. Some truths that even grown-ups are too scared to talk about, to acknowledge even. And with the same sincerity, he had penned down the motivation, we all yearn for in our darkest times.It inspires me to keep going, no matter what. One day or another, we will find a way out, a destination we all have been dreaming of, and about some, we didn’t even dream of.

Why do I recommend it?

This is a book I would recommend to read and re-read to all, in a search of motivation to keep working, looking for what you truly want.Sooner or later, we reach where we are destined to be, and often times, it is better than our imagination.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

I’ve recently read this book after been hearing about it a million times from a booktuber I follow, Merphy Napier. She read the book to her son and was really moved by it.This is a collection of all of the quotes I believe in, want others to follow too. Not much about the story, but the lessons each page is filled with, and with caricatures of them.

“I’m so small”, said the mole.

“Yes”, said the boy, “but you make a huge difference.”

Why do I recommend it?

The book has everything one needs from time to time to have a positive outlook on life, all in one place.A dosage for life through quotes and drawings. To never let go. To not give up. And to say, look how far we have come.I’ve been recommending this book to every bibliophile out there. Trust me and give it a read.

Closing lines

In our restless quest to grow up, to fulfill our dreams that being young and out of money can’t achieve. We all have been just so busy growing up that often, we leave our innocence, carefree attitude behind. We lost it, only to yearn for it later when we can’t have it. Funny how always do we want something, we can’t have. Frankly, we always do, don’t we?

Just to preserve, cater to that ounce of innocence I started reading books originally meant for kids. Honestly, it has come up with solutions for my adult problems. Time and again, given me hope to keep sailing.

A help can sail you a long way, and this has been my motivation, my safe haven.