childrens literature

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children's literature writing whose primary audience is children.

See also children's book illustration .

The Beginnings of Children's Literature

The earliest of what came to be regarded as children's literature was first meant for adults. Among this ancient body of oral literature were myths and legends created to explain the natural phenomena of night and day and the changing seasons. Ballads, sagas, and epic tales were told by the fireside or in courts to an audience of adults and children eager to hear of the adventures of heroes. Many of these tales were later written down and are enjoyed by children today.

The first literature written specifically for children was intended to instruct them. During the Middle Ages the Venerable Bede, Aelfric, St. Aldhelm, and St. Anselm all wrote school texts in Latin, some of which were later used in schools in England and colonial America. More enjoyable and enduring fare came later when William Caxton, England's first printer, published Aesop's Fables (1484) and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur (1485). The hornbook , invented at the end of the 15th cent., taught children the alphabet, numerals, and the Lord's Prayer. Alphabet books were popular in battledore and in chapbook form. The New England Primer (1689), the first children's book published in the American colonies, taught the alphabet along with prayers and religious exhortations.

The first distinctly juvenile literature in England and the United States consisted of gloomy and pious tales—mostly recounting the deaths of sanctimonious children—written for the edification of Puritan boys and girls. Out of this period came one classic for both children and adults, John Bunyan 's Pilgrim's Progress (1678). Later works written for adults but adapted for children were Daniel Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels (1726).

In 1729 the English translation of Charles Perrault 's Tales of Mother Goose became popular in England. A collection of Mother Goose rhymes was published in 1765 by John Newbery , an English author and bookseller. Newbery was the first publisher to devote himself seriously to publishing for children. Among his publications were A Pretty Little Pocket Book (1744) and The Renowned History of Little Goody Two Shoes (1765). Pirated editions of Newbery's works were soon published in the United States by Isaiah Thomas and others.

By the end of the 18th cent., juvenile literature, partly under the influence of Locke and Rousseau , had again become didactic. This time the didacticism was of an intellectual and moralistic variety, as evidenced in the sober, uplifting books of such authors as Thomas Day , Mary Sherwood, and Maria Edgeworth in England and in the United States by Samuel Goodrich (pseud. Peter Parley) and Martha Finley (pseud. Martha Farquarson), who wrote the famous Elsie Dinsmore series.

A Flowering of Children's Literature

Contrasting with the didactic movement was 19th-century romanticism, which produced a body of literature that genuinely belonged to children. For the first time children's books contained fantasy and realism, fun and adventure, and many of the books written at that time are still popular today. Folk tales collected in Germany by the brothers Grimm were translated into English in 1823. The fairy stories of Hans Christian Andersen appeared in England in 1846. At the end of the 19th cent. Joseph Jacobs compiled English folk tales. Andrew Lang, a folklorist, began a series of fairy tales. Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense (1846) and Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses (1885) set the style for much of the poetry written for children today. Lewis Carroll's twin masterpieces Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872) combine lunacy and fantasy with satire and word games.

Victorian family life is realistically depicted in Louisa May Alcott 's Little Women (1868), whereas Mark Twain 's Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Robert Louis Stevenson 's Treasure Island (1880) emphasize adventure; all three books present fully developed characters. At the turn of the century several children's magazines were being published, the most important being the St. Nicholas Magazine (1887–1943).

Meanwhile, translations widened the world of the English-speaking child from the 19th cent. on; popular translated works include J. D. Wyss 's Swiss Family Robinson (tr. from the German, 1814); Carlo Collodi 's Pinocchio (tr. from the Italian, 1892); Felix Salten's Bambi (tr. from the German, 1928); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 's Little Prince (tr. from the French, 1943); Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking (tr. from the Swedish, 1950); and Herta von Gebhardt's The Girl from Nowhere (tr. from the German, 1959).

The Twentieth Century

The contributions and innovations of the 19th cent. continued into the 20th cent., achieving a distinct place in literature for children's books, and spawning innumerable genres of children's literature. Fantasy written for children includes L. Frank Baum 's Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), A. A. Milne 's Winnie-the-Pooh (1927), P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins (1934), J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Hobbit (1937), C. S. Lewis 's "Narnia" series, E. B. White 's Charlotte's Web (1952) and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970), Madeleine L'Engle's science-fiction A Wrinkle in Time (1962), Lloyd Alexander's Book of Three (1964), Brian Jacques's Redwall series (1987–), and J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter books (7 vol., 1997–2007). Among the most popular and influential books in the last half of the 20th cent. are the many novels of Beverly Cleary , which portray the lives of ordinary children. Popular collections of humorous verse include Laura Richards's Tirra Lirra (1932), Hilaire Belloc 's Cautionary Verses (1941), John Ciardi 's Reason for the Pelican (1959), and Arnold Spilka's Rumbudgin of Nonsense (1970).

Adventure and mystery are found in such works as Armstrong Sperry's Call It Courage (1941) and E. L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1968). The novel for children now includes many of the literary, psychological, and social elements found in its adult counterpart. Books with sophisticated emphasis on plot, mood, characterization, or setting are Kenneth Grahame 's Wind in the Willows (1908), Esther Forbes's Johnny Tremain (1944), Joseph Krumgold's And Now Miguel (1953), and Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins (1961). Mature treatment of the emotions of growing up characterizes Irene Hunt's Up a Road Slowly (1966), whereas William Armstrong's Sounder (1970) realistically portrays the experiences of a black sharecropper and his family.

From the 1960s through the 90s "socially relevant" children's books have appeared, treating subjects like death, drugs, sex, urban crisis, discrimination, the environment, and women's liberation. S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders (1980) and Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese (1977) are two novels that offer vivid portrayals of the sometimes unpleasant aspects of maturing. These books also reveal the trend toward a growing literature for teenagers. Other novelists that write convincingly of growing up in contemporary society include Ellen Raskin, Judy Blume, and Cynthia Voigt. Some critics consider these books as didactic as the children's books of the 17th and early 19th cent.

Another trend has been books written by children, especially poetry, such as Richard Lewis's Miracles (1966), a collection of poems written by children of many countries. During the 20th cent. in particular, new collections of tales that reach back to the oral roots of literature have come from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. International folktales have also received increasing attention. Among the many authors pursuing these themes, Verna Aardema compiles African folktales and Yoko Kawashima Watkins studies Asian oral traditions. During the 1980s and 90s in particular, multicultural concerns became an important aspect of the new realistic tradition in children's literature, as in Allen Say's tales of the Japanese-American immigrant experience.

The Newbery Medal, an award for the most distinguished work of literature for children, was established by Frederic Melcher in 1922; in 1938 he established a second award, the Caldecott Medal, for the best picture book of the year. An international children's book award, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, was given in 1970 for the first time to an American, Maurice Sendak , in recognition of his contribution to children's literature. His Where the Wild Things Are (1963) won him international acclaim and was followed by two sequels, In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside Over There (1981).

Magazines that review and discuss children's literature include The Horn Book,The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, and the School Library Journal in the United States and The Junior Bookshelf in Great Britain.

Bibliography

See B. Hürlimann, Three Centuries of Children's Books in Europe (1967); S. Egoff et al., Only Connect (1969); C. Meigs, A Critical History of Children's Literature (rev. ed. 1969); J. Karl, From Childhood to Childhood (1970); M. Lystad, From Dr. Mather to Dr. Seuss (1980); S. Egoff, Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature (1981) and World Within: Children's Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Today (1988); D. E. Norton, Through the Eyes of a Child (1983); F. Butler and R. W. Robert, ed., Reflections on Literature for Children (1984); C. Frey and J. Griffith, The Literary Heritage of Childhood (1987); M. West, Before Oz: Juvenile Fantasy Stories from 19th-Century America (1989); M. H. Arbuthnot et al., Children and Books (8th ed. 1991); J. Wullschläger, Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame and A. A. Milne (1995); J. Goldthwaite, The Natural History of Make-Believe: Tracing the Literature of Imagination for Children (1996); J. Zipes et al., The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature (2005); L. S. Marcus, Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepeneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature (2008); S. Lerer, Children's Literature: A Reader's History (2008).

children's literature. The juvenile book trade in England might be said to have had its beginnings in the anxiety of 17th-cent. Protestants to rescue children from hell, or from Rome, which was synonymous. Benjamin Harris (fl. 1673–1710), an Anabaptist of strong political views, was one of the first to publish popular educational works. Both War with the Devil (1673) by Benjamin Keach and Harris's own Protestant Tutor (1679) went into many editions. The first is a verse dialogue in which Christ and the Devil battle for the soul of Youth; the second is remarkable for its sensational description of tortures, martyrdoms, massacres, and popish plots, copiously illustrated. Nathaniel Crouch (?1632–?1725), miscellaneous writer and publisher, recognized the profit to be derived from such works. His versified Bible stories, Youth's Divine Pastime (3rd edn., 1691), includes many crudely violent, even salacious, episodes. James Janeway's A Token for Children (1672), a collection of exemplary lives, was the first book to feature children only, but the longest-lived Puritan classic was I. Watts's Divine Songs for the Use of Children (1715).

There was to be no fiction until the mid-18th cent. The traditional stories enjoyed by children, like the Robin Hood saga, the ancient romances of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, were abhorred by Puritans. Though translations of French fairy tales by Mme d'Aulnoy and C. Perrault appeared in 1699 and 1729 respectively, these were not intended for children, nor were the Arabian Nights tales. But in 1749 S. Fielding included two fairy tales in The Governess, or Little Female Academy, the first juvenile novel. As I. and P. Opie have shown, nursery rhymes long existed as an oral tradition, but were not collected until 1744, when Mary Cooper published Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, Vol. II (apparently preceded shortly before by Tommy Thumb's Song Book) and J. Newbery published A Little Pretty Pocket Book, a genial medley of rhymes, fables, and letters from Jack the Giant-Killer to Master Tommy and Miss Kitty; one of his better-known titles was The History of Little Goody Two-shoes (1765).

Newbery's boisterous jollity went out of fashion. Ideal late Georgian children were rational and well informed; their books were serious, moral, and dense with facts. M. Edgeworth was one of the very few who could turn these into art. C. Sinclair intended Holiday House (1839) as a corrective to the moral tale, but even this account of two turbulent children ends in sobriety.

There was to be much in this vein from evangelical writers. M. M. Sherwood's History of the Fairchild Family, from 1818, was one of the most universally read juvenile books of the century. With the spread of Sunday schools and increasing literacy, a huge market for religious fiction was created, stories of street waifs by such writers as ‘ Hesba Stretton’. A substantial proportion was aimed at the working classes and related to their own background. C. Yonge, in her pamphlet What Books to Give and What to Lend (1887), had separate sections for ‘drawing-room books’ and books for the poor.

Into the first category came works of imagination such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Hailed by F. J. Harvey Darton in 1932 as ‘the spiritual volcano of children's books’, it had its roots in the violence and anarchy of nursery rhymes, as did E. Lear's nonsense poems. Edgar Taylor's 1823 translation of the Grimms' tales, and translations of H. Andersen in 1846, indicated that fantasy was now acceptable, though it was often used for didactic ends, as in C. Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1863). G. MacDonald's finely wrought fantasies, such as At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872), on the other hand, leave the reader to infer the meaning.

Among other Victorian ‘drawing-room’ writers were J. H. Ewing and M. L. Molesworth, whose works have not worn well. On the other hand, public school stories, such as T. Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and F. W. Farrar's Eric, or Little by Little (1858), an emotional but veiled account of sexual corruption, were very popular with working-class boys. Adventure writers such as R. M. Ballantyne, G. A. Henty, and W. H. G. Kingston (1814–80) were read both by boys and by girls. The greatest example of the genre is R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883).

The turn of the century saw a great flowering. R. Kipling's varied writing including two Jungle Books (1894–5), Stalky & Co. (1899), The Just-So Stories (1902), Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), and Rewards and Fairies (1910). E. Nesbit created attractively high-spirited and independent children in her three stories about the Bastable family and in her later fantasies such as Five Children and It (1902). B. Potter began her series of sardonically humorous animal stories, which always favour the villain at the expense of the well-behaved, with The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902). K. Grahame, who had broken new ground with his evocation of the ruthless egocentricity of childhood in The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), surprised and at first disappointed his admirers with an animal fantasy, The Wind in the Willows (1908).

Perhaps roused by J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan (1904), Edwardian literati made a cult of childhood, averring that children held the key to the meaning of life. The ideal child was imaginative and childlike. Belief in fairies was sedulously cultivated, and writers ranging from de la Mare to Enid Blyton (1897–1968) used them in verse and stories. The real world had little place in pre-1950s books; middle-class parents wished to shelter their young. WithSwallows and Amazons (1930) Ransome began an enduring fashion for holiday adventures. William Brown, the popular schoolboy hero, was created by Richmal Crompton (1890–1969) in stories first published for Home Magazine and in book form in 1922 (Just William, More William). There was some distinguished fantasy-writing, as in the Dr Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting (1886–1947), Masefield's The Midnight Folk (1927) and The Box of Delights (1935), Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), and T. H. White's rewording of Arthurian myth, The Sword in the Stone (1938), while the winsome characters and aphorisms from Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) have become as famous as those in Alice.

There was a second flowering of children's books after the Second World War. Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–92) was foremost among the writers of historical fiction, with outstanding novels about Roman and Viking Britain; in The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973) Alan Garner (1934– ) wove myth with characters from the past and the present, a recurring theme also with P. Lively. Joan Aiken (1924– ) and Leon Garfield (1921–96) wrote fast-paced historical melodrama. Fantasy has long been the great strength of British children's books, and the post-war period produced many classics, including C. S. Lewis's Narnia cycle, Mary Norton's The Borrowers (1952) and its sequels, Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden (1958), and Richard Adams's animal epic, Watership Down (1972).

The last two decades of the 20th cent. have seen a reversion to the Victorian policy of providing books that reflect their readers' background. It is also reminiscent of 17th-cent. Puritan books, in that children are confronted with all the miseries of the human condition, nowadays ranging from drugs, child abuse, and dysfunctional families to war. The young themselves tend to want horror stories and monsters from outer space. While all this can produce capable writing, it is rather more interesting as an aspect of social history than as literature.