Are toddlers ready for Jane Eyre?

Today marks the 168th anniversary of the death of Emily Brontë. Because of her last days, Charlotte's words about her death or it taking place in (almost) winter, we always find it to be a melancholy sort of day.

The New York Times has an article on publishing imprints devoted to bringing classics to kids. Despite the pervading melancholy, we have laughed out loud at this:

Another popular series, Cozy Classics, which was created by the twin brothers Jack and Holman Wang, reduces great works of literature to 12-word stories, illustrated with photos of handmade felt figurines. (Their rendition of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” can be rattled off in a single breath: “Soldier-Friends-Run-Dance-Goodbye-Hug-Horse-Boom!-Hurt-Sleep-Snow-Love.”)
Their titles, which include “Jane Eyre,” “Emma” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” are designed for babies and toddlers, but include some arch visual jokes directed at the parents, like a felt figurine of Miss Havisham flailing about in flames in “Great Expectations.”
Even with the adorable fuzzy figures, the books can be overwhelming. “My daughter started crying hysterically 3 pages into it,” one reader wrote of her 18-month-old in an Amazon review of “Moby-Dick.” Another reviewer questioned whether a toddler is ready for “Jane Eyre,” and called the Cozy Classics version “weird, dark and not the most appropriate for kids who are reading board books.”
Holman Wang said he and his brother wanted to preserve the sometimes grim and complex tone of the originals, rather than conforming to the “fluffy bunny aesthetic” of most contemporary picture books. (Alexandra Alter)

A question by Oxford University Press Blog:

What do Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, and Hanan Al-Shaykh have in common? Give up? Other than all being great authors who write in English, they were all influenced by One Thousand and One Nights. (Lucie Taylor)

On AnneBrontë.org, Nick Holland celebrates the publication of Agnes Grey (and Wuthering Heights) around this time of the year in 1847.