Dangerous Children

Gross explores our complex fascination with uncanny children in works of fiction.   Ranging from Victorian to modern works—Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland , Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio , Henry James’s What Maisie Knew , J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy , Franz Kafka’s “The Cares of a Family Man,” Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart , and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita —Kenneth Gross’s book delves into stories that center around the figure of a strang