Literature
The entire book consists of fourteen chapters, each one focusing on one of life's mysteries which recurs in children's literature. Later chapters discuss topics like "The Mystery of the Home," "The Mystery of Goodness," and "The Mystery of Divine Providence."
The unique feature of the book is the argument of each chapter. For each mystery, the author selects several stories from the canon of children's classics to illustrate the universality of the theme and the perennial wisdom these stories offer.
Thus these old classics assume a new light. They are not only delightful, enchanting tales for the young but also mines of wisdom for the old. You will want to read or rereard some of these classics after reading The Mysteries of Life because they become luminous in meaning.
As the author explains in the chapter "The Mysteries of Stories," with its special emphasis on George MacDonald's
AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and good stories are like "windows," letting the light from a world above enter and providing an opening to a higher world. Chidlren and stories are both "windows" linking the human and divine worlds, mediating between them.
Another feature of the book is its selection of the classics of children's literature to develop its thesis. All the favorites appear from Grimm's folk tales to Anderson's fairy tales to Robert Louis Stevenson's A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES to Francis Hodgson Burnett's THE SECRET GARDEN to Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE MEN and LITTLE WOMEN. Reading these works will reawaken the child in all adults and make them fall in love with life all over again.
In short, this is a staunchly pro-family, pro-child, pro-Catholic, pro-life book. In the last chapter especially the author argues, "The classics of children's literature revere and honor the gift of human life. No amount of gold in the world is more precious to King Midas than his daughter Marygold. Diamond's baby brother and sister in AT THE BACK OF THE NORTHWIND are gifts from heaven: "Where did you get your eyes so blue/ Out of the sky as I came through.' "
The book concludes with the position that as modern culture becomes more anti-life and anti-child, the sense of mystery also diminishes: "If the gift of human life is not sacred, then nothing is sacred."
Finally, this book is written for everyone who loves wisdom and truth in its purity and simplicity and desires the wisdom of the ages and the proverbial truths that have been transmitted through the living stream of tradition, folklore, poems, fairy tales, myths, allegories, parables, and great adventure stories.
For children's classics---along with Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare---belong to that body of knowledge that Matthew Arnold described as "the best that has been thought and said."
Just as it is the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes" who dares to announce the self-evident truth which everyone is afraid to utter---"The king is naked"---so too children's literature can reveal truths which escape the pundits and the professors.
The traditional, timeless wisdom in children's classics that Dr. Kalpakgian explores illuminates the mysteries of life such as the mystery of wishes. Why do
Cinderella's wishes come truth while the Fisherman's Wife's wishes go unfulfilled? Here is part of the answer: "Cinderella's yearning for love, the Little Mermaid's wish for an immortal soul, and King Midas's begging for the return of his daughter are noble exalted wishes in comparison to the fisherman's wife's fatuous desire to be an emperor or the medical student's silly whim of seeing into another person's heart.
What is the mystery of truth, and why is it that "truth will out" as the saying goes? Children's literature clarifies this phenomenon. As the author explains, "The discovery of the truth does not always occur as a result of investigation, research, or analysis but often results from a comic surprise, an overheard conversation --- a goose girl whispering a secret inside an oven."
What is the mystery of children? It lies in their secret power, Hans Christian Andersen illustrates in "The Snow Queen---the power to cure melancholy, to fill a home with mirth, to melt the heart, to renew the world with hope. Dr. Kalpakgian comments, "With a kiss Thumbelina restores the dead swallow to the world of the living. With tears Gerda rescues the frozen, hardened Kay from the bleak world of the Snow Queen."
What is the mystery of luck? Why is it that according to proverbs and folklore that children and fools are the luckiest people? How come it is true that sometimes when a person succeeds, he was not trying very hard in the first place?
