First, a heartfelt thanks to the small number of devoted publishing houses like Dover, Universe at Rizzoli, and the New York Review Classics, who have undertaken the laudable project of reissuing classic out-of-print children's books. Their diligence matters, because, while used copies of originals may be searched online, the reprinting of classics resuscitates and revitalizes them, recalls them to mind, and, most importantly, brings them to the attention of an entirely new generation of

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... and children. It also compels us to revise our assessment of them. All this occurred to me as-with a fascinated seven-year-old boy at my elbow-I pored over the refurbished pages of Struwwelpeter (reissued by Dover), one of the most controversial, influential, and excoriated children's books of all time. It was written and illustrated in 1844 by Heinrich Hoffmann, a Frankfurt medical doctor. Subsequently translated into more than one hundred languages, the book has been parodied, mocked, revised, adapted to multiple mediums (including a so-called "junk opera" that debuted in London in 1998), and condemned for its alleged sadism, didacticism, and supposed advocacy of blind obedience. It is a book that adults love to hate and that children find enthralling. Humorous, whimsical, outrageous, and bursting with wild exaggeration as well as with an undeniable and notorious streak of terror, Struwwelpeter is in truth a delight. It grips child readers and teaches them not only about the baleful consequences of misbehavior, but also about the subtle lesson that art is made up of powerful contradictory feelings and ideas: that art and literature can be both grim and funny, frightening and cheerful, momentous and banal-like myths and legends and fairy tales.