SOURCE: Gerrard, Nicci. “Alison in Wonderland.” New Statesman and Society 86, no. 1428 (25 May 1990): 32-3.

In the following review, Gerrard commends Lurie's biographical sketches of various children's writers in Don't Tell the Grown-Ups but faults Lurie's overly-determined, excessively narrow critical approach and analysis.

“‘There's glory for you!’ ‘I don't know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said. ‘I meant, “there's a nice knock-down argument for you!”’ ‘But glory doesn't mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”

Children love lifting up stones to discover hidden life, poking in rock pools, hiding in long grass where grown-ups can't see them, making up secret languages, introducing chaos or creating their own rules. Crawl under a table, and it is a house; turn it upside down and it...