TREVOR: Have you been reading lots of children’s stories, to help you decide whether to take the course?

STEPHANIE: Yeah. I’ve gone as far back as the late seventeenth century, though I know there were earlier children’s stories.

TREVOR: So does that mean you’ve read Perrault’s fairy tales? Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, and so on.

STEPHANIE: Yes. They must be important, because no stories of that type had been written before, there were the first. Then there’s The Swiss Family Robinson.

TREVOR: I haven’t read that.

STEPHANIE: The English name makes it sound as though Robinson is the family’s surname, but a more accurate translation would be The Swiss Robinsons, because it’s about a Swiss family who are shipwrecked, like Robinson Crusoe in the novel of a century earlier.

TREVOR: Well I never knew that!

STEPHANIE: Have you read Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King?

TREVOR: Wasn’t that the basis for Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker?

STEPHANIE: That’s right. It has some quite bizarre elements.

TREVOR: I hope you’ve read Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince. It’s probably my favourite children’s story of all time.

STEPHANIE: Mine too! And it’s so surprising, because Wilde is best known for his plays, and most of them are very witty, but The Happy Prince is really moving. I struggled with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – there long books, and I gave up after one.

TREVOR: It’s extremely popular, though.

STEPHANIE: Yeah, but whereas something like The Happy Prince just carried me along with it, The Lord of the Rings took more effort than I was prepared to give it.

TREVOR: I didn’t find that – I love it.

STEPHANIE: Another one I’ve read is War Horse.

TREVOR: Oh yes. It’s about the First Word War, isn’t it? Hardly what you’d expect for a children’s story.

STEPHANIE: Exactly, but it’s been very successful. Have you read any …