Reading this marvelous biography of the great circus impresario P.T. Barnum makes clear just how literate and clever books for children once were. It's astonishing to realize that in the 1950s pre-adolescents were served up sentences such as the following:

"P.T. Barnum was a big, bluff, brawny man with curly hair and a potato-like nose, and a dimple in his chin and a spark in his eye. He seemed larger than life, and gaudier, like one of his own circus posters, and only circus superlatives seemed fit to describe him."
[...]
"Barnum's loudest applause goes to the skillful dissembler and deceiver, the practical joker, the sharp trader, the man who 'puts something over' on someone else. Therefore when he says of Joice Heth's masquerade, 'I honestly believed all this,' the chances are it was simply an extension of his deceit, a final flight of the humbug."
[...]
"All adverse criticism, however, was smashed and swept away in the tidal wave of adulation that inundated Europe."

The writing throughout is superb, witty and sly, complex and clear. If you take any joy in language, "The World's Greatest Showman" will transport you -- whether you give a fig about P.T. Barnum or not. ( )

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1810-1891