Kiddy-Lit

Kiddy-Lit. Back in the 1960s, that’s what my friends called their college class in children’s literature. It was an education class required for those planning to teach kindergarten through 8th grade. I was studying secondary education: high school history and English. We were not required to take that class. Instead, we spent our time in Art and Science classes studying classic adult literature. Did that Kiddy-Lit class contain Young Adult literature? Probably not. I don’t even remember that term being used back then. Why am I suddenly concerned with children’s literature? My grandchildren have access to huge numbers of terrific titles. And, I am a children's writer myself. I'm currently writing a sequel to The Magic Nation Gift Shop. For the new book,I wrote a story about life in Antebellum America. I wanted a pre-teenage girl to mention a children’s book she had read. “Little Women will be perfect!” I thought. It’s about girls, and was written in America. But no, it was published in 1880. I looked up the publication dates of famous books that would be appropriate—American or not. Very few were written before the Civil War. The Night Before Christmas was one. I could have used that, I suppose, but my story is not a Christmas one. Tom Brown’s Schooldays was published in 1857. Would a young girl living on a farm in 1859 have such a recent book? I also wanted a book a girl would like! Rip Van Winkle, 1819, might work. (But isn’t that really more of a short story?) I almost used Tanglewood Tales by Hawthorne. It appears to be one of the very first collections of children’s stories written in America. But, my book is for 4th-6th graders. Wouldn’t “Tanglewood” be a hard word to read? And, most of us have never heard of that Hawthorne title. So I kept looking. “Alice in Wonderland would be a good choice,” I thought. But, no, it was published in 1865. Treasure Island, 1883,The Jungle Book, 1894, Black Beauty, 1897, Tom Sawyer, 1886, Heidi, 1880 and so on. I ended up using Swiss Family Robinson, 1812. Since my story is about family and travel, I thought it just might work. Why was there such little children’s literature before the Civil War? And why virtually none about girls? Many people, and especially children, were illiterate. Boys were taught more often than girls. Those who could read could not afford books. Libraries were rare before the 1880s: a total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929. One-room schoolhouses did not have libraries. In fact, my elementary school in the 1950s did not have one! A local librarian came every few weeks with books for us to check out from the Hamilton County system. Children worked back then. Would they even have time to read? And if they did have time in the evenings, would their house have enough light? I imagine many American children had only read the Bible and McGuffey’s readers. (Over 10 million copies of McGuffey's readers were sold between 1836 and 1960.) Young girls with good reading skills probably enjoyed Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from the early nineteenth century. Such an interesting topic! I plan to include this in my study guide in the back of my new book. It was not my original intention when I wrote the story—but it is certainly important for kids to realize how lucky they are. And interesting aside: While researching Kiddy-Lit, I found a website listing the books translated into the most languages. Of course, the Bible was first. The second book was a surprise—and usually considered a children’s book-- The Little Prince, 1943. So, hats off to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. People speaking over 300 languages can read his book.