Every summer, I pick up a small Tinkle Digest, a Harry Potter book, or Winnie the Pooh—stories I first read as a child. The pages are faded, the colour of old mustard or coffee. I don’t read them just for nostalgia, though that feeling is always there. I read them because they still surprise me. That’s the special magic of great children’s books: they’re made to last long after we grow up. In serious literary circles, children’s books hold a strange place. We call them “forma