CS Lewis' dedication in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" is superb. : r/books
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realised that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C.S. Lewis" The stages of liking, outgrowing, and returning to fairy tales is a comment that resonated with how I've been reading of late. I have been revisiting the books that I read back in school, those that I grew up with. I realise that perhaps I could not have enjoyed these even a few years earlier, and yet, having reached a certain age (how wonderfully Lewis leaves that open-ended), I'm realising that despite what is often said, these are, in fact, stories that I can retur