Only Connect by Sheila A. Egoff

Only Connect Reviews

• 
  Michael Fitzgerald

  This second edition has 38 readings, most of which are kept from the 1969 first edition. There are some very good new pieces, especially the two by John Rowe Townsend. Some replacements were well thought out and one gets the sense that this is an updated improvement. Very different from the baby-out-with-the-bathwater third edition that seemed to believe that newer = better. Those with a passion for the topic will want to read both the first and second editions (the third is simply an entirely different book).
• 
  First Second Books

  Critical thought on children's literature from the 1960s makes me realize that the industry was much, much different then than it is now!
• 
  Destinee

  This is awfully dated (I didn't finish it), but some essays hold up. I particularly liked "Children's Reading and Adults' Values" by Rosenehim because the author emphatically asks adults to treat young readers with respect ("...'great' children's literature...is simply great literature").
  
  "Thoughts Concerning Children's Books" by Penelope Mortimer is good, too. It's pretty funny and she's arguing that "a good book cannot possibly be written for a particular age." I don't 100% agree with that statement (I think she wasn't considering books for babies), but I agree with the underlying principle that quality is quality.
• 
  Michael Fitzgerald

  It's very frustrating that this book has been misnamed a "third edition" - there are ZERO readings in it that are found in the first edition and ZERO readings found in the second edition. It's 42 entirely different readings. I very much disagree with the rationale for not renaming the collection. Not even P. L. Travers's "Only Connect" remains, and yet "we believe in the spirit of the title" - what a load of nonsense. I suspect that they just wanted to ride on the coattails of the earlier editions.
  
  This is not nearly as good a book as the earlier editions. Too much jive literary theory (for example, we now have a section for "Gender Relations").
• 
  Molly

  This collection is a treasure trove of literary criticism and the development of children's literature. Included are articles by J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Graham Greene, and T.S. Eliot. Many of the articles are nothing short of fascinating, especially the piece "A Late Wanderer in Oz" by Jordan Brotman, Rumer Godden's "Imaginary Correspondence" between Beatrix Potter and her modern-day publisher, V. Andal, and "Didacticism in Modern Dress" by John Rowe Townsend.
• 
  Jenny

  I've been working through many of my books about books lately, and they've all be delightful... until this one. While the essays did vary in quality, I was struck by how many seemed mean-spirited, critical, and snobbish. A handful were delightful (Lewis's and Tolkien's are both lovely), but many of the rest felt dated and unhelpful.
• 
  Emma

  Some of these essays hold up better than others. My favourite is P L Travers' essay which is where the book takes its title. I love how Travers connects myths, fairytales, reality and her own work together to demonstrate the human mind and societal values.
  I strongly disliked many who only referenced male authors, specifically Helen Lourie's essay, as she writes that women aren't as free to write as men because they will go insane. What a load of bull.
• 
  Avril

  This book was published in 1969, but is a collection of older pieces. It is interesting how little difference the fifty years that have passed since publication have made to the relevance of many of the essays, those that deal with the history of various types of children is literature, for instance, or with individual writers. But what I found most fascinating were the essays dealing with contemporary (1960s) books. That the writers were able to accurately assess the best of their own time can be seen in the fact that many of the 1960s books they praised were ones that I read as a child in the 1980s, and that are still published today, often as ‘children’s classics’.
• 
  J.

  A somewhat useful collection of 1960's children's lit scholarship. A few nice articles, and a good Engdahl interview. Not very theoretical.