Adults often find surprising subtexts in children’s literature – but are they really there? Hephzibah Anderson delves into the world of Freud and fairy tales.

　　成年人经常能在儿童读物中发现令人意想不到的潜台词——但这些潜台词真的存在吗?赫弗齐芭•安德森深入探究了弗洛伊德理论和童话世界。

　　As a child many of my favourite books had food as a theme. One in particular told the story of a boy who helped save his local burger bar by becoming a gastro-sleuth to track down a lost secretingredient.

　　小时候，我最喜欢看的是以食物为主题的书。令我印象尤为深刻的一个故事是：有一个小男孩为了拯救当地的汉堡店，从而化身为“味觉侦探”去寻找遗失的秘方。

　　Long after losing track of the book and forgetting its title, I found myself in Edinburgh to interview Alexander McCall Smith. He was already the mega-selling author of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, but years earlier, he had published a few children’s books. There among them on a shelf wasThe Perfect Hamburger.

　　很多年过去了，书已经找不到了，甚至连书名也已记不清。直到我去爱丁堡拜访亚历山大·考尔史密斯。那时他已经凭着《第一女子侦探事务所》系列小说成为了超级畅销作家，但早年，他也出版过一些儿童书籍。这些书籍在他的书架上放着，其中有一本就是《一个完美的汉堡》。

　　It was my book. Except that it wasn’t – not really. While burgers do indeed feature in lip-smacking detail, this time it was clear to me that The Perfect Hamburger is actually a tale of corporate greed and the fate of small businesses forced to compete with big chains.

　　这就是我说的那本小说。其实不是——至少不完全是。小时候我觉得这是一个关于美味的汉堡的故事，而如今我再次读它，看到的却是一个大企业的贪婪以及小企业被迫同大型连锁店竞争的悲惨命运。

　　Revisiting kids’ books in adulthood can yield all sorts of weird and wonderful subtexts, some more obvious than others. How could Dr Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas be anything other than aparable of consumerism? Why would it not seem blindingly clear that CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia are in fact a fantastical re-imagining of Christian theology?

　　成年人重读儿童读物总会衍生出很多奇特的潜台词，而且有的尤其明显。苏斯博士的《圣诞怪杰》其实是一个消费主义的预言。而C.S.路易斯的《纳尼亚传奇》实际上是一个关于基督教神学的神奇重构。

　　Similar close readings have rendered the Paddington Bear books fables about immigration and Babar the Elephant an endorsement of French colonialism. Alice’s Wonderland adventures have been seen as everything from a paean to mathematical logic to a satire about the War of the Roses or a trippy caperwith drugs as an underlying theme.

　　同样地，当你重新细读《小熊帕丁顿》系列丛书时，你会发现，这是关于移民问题的寓言，而《大象巴巴》则是对法国殖民主义的认可。《爱丽丝梦游仙境》的再读便会发现小说是从“对数理逻辑的赞歌”，到“玫瑰战争的讽刺”，再到“以毒品为潜在主题的迷幻剧”。

　　And what about The Little Engine That Could? You might know it as a story about trains that fosters can-do optimism, but it has also been taken as a you-go-girl feminist tale. (The eponymous little engine is a lady train and when she breaks down, only another female train will stop to help out.) As for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: why, it’s an allegorical representation of the debate surrounding late 19th Century US monetary policy, of course.

　　那么《小火车头做到了》呢?你可能会认为这是一本能够培养积极进取的乐观精神的小火车头历险故事。但它也是一个宣扬女权主义的故事。(故事中同名的小火车头是一个女孩形象，而且当她遇到故障时，只有另一辆女性火车停下来帮助她。)至于《绿野仙踪》，它就美国十九世纪后期货币政策的大争论进行了寓言式的描述。

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（编辑：何莹莹）