A review by alisegrant
The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

4.0

A read-aloud for my children. Charles Kingsley is as verbose as he ever has been in this one, and it took us several months to get through. But I really enjoyed the "proofs" Kingsley gives for believing in fairies and water babies. And the chapter about how a poor natural scientist was treated for madness after he finds a water baby is extremely funny; my children and I couldn't stop laughing. Overall this is very sweet, very moral (not unexpected from Victorian-era lit), and quite sweeping in it's scope. We learned as much about ponds, rivers, seas and their occupants as we did about great fairies and their sweet water babies.