Top 5 Children’s Books for Grown-Ups

Brain Pickings looks at ‘five works of literature intended for children but rich in insight and wisdom about our adult reality and the ways of the grown-up world’.

1. The Little Prince

There’s hardly a more profound reflection on human truth than Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, charmingly written and beautifully illustrated in a way that sweeps you into a whirlwind of childhood imagination and in the process gently lands you on the deepest truths of existential philosophy.

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Published in 1943, translated into 180 languages since and adapted to just about every medium, Exupéry’s famous novella is one of the best-selling books of all time. More importantly, it’s one of the most important handbooks to being a thoughtful, introspective adult, disguised as a children’s book.2. Winnie the Pooh

It’s a rare talent to capture profound insight in linguistic minimalism and simplicity. And hardly any literary figure does it better than A. A. Milne does in the iconic Winnie-the-Pooh books.

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?” ~Pooh

You can’t stay in your corner of the forest, waiting for others to come to you; you have to go to them sometimes.” ~ Pooh

Beneath the cloak of innocuous irreverence lies an undercurrent of postmodern wisdom about the ways of the world that somehow sneaks up on you and catches you completely off-guard, only to deliver a powerful moment of reflection and illumination.