Behold the child : American children and their books, 1621-1922

In Behold the Child, Gillian Avery offers an engaging account of children's literature in America from colonial times to the early twentieth century. Exploring a variety of social, cultural, and practical forces, Avery shows how the literature of the old world influenced that of the new and describes the emergence of uniquely American styles and themes in children's books. Her topics include the early days of colonial publishing, the defenders and detractors of Mother Goose, the influence of Sunday schools and tract societies, the "chaste eroticism" of romantic fiction for young readers, and changing notions of American heroes and heroines. Offers an insight into the changing face of American childhood through three centuries. This study shows how social, cultural and often very practical forces were to shape American children's literature, and how it established for itself a significant and vital role in world literature. 'Nothing in our more diffuse civilisation,' wrote William Sloane in his account of seventeenth-century children's books, 'quite holds the pivotal position, the centrality, which religion held in seventeenth century England and America.