Beginnings of Children’s
Literature
• What is Children’s Literature?
• What is Young Adult Literature?
• Yesterday and Today in the World of
Children’s Books
• What are the values of Children’s Literature?
• Review the criteria of literary evaluation
• Importance of developmental characteristics
What is Children’s Literature?
• stories that children enjoy and typically they have a
child or childlike character (often an animal) at their
heart
• the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the
forms and structures of language
• Consists of books that are not only read and
enjoyed, but also that have been written for
children and that meet high literary and artistic
standards (Sutherland & Arbuthnot: 1991)
What is Children’s Literature?
• According to Michael Rosen, “I think of
children’s books as not so much for
children, but as the filling that goes
between the child world and the adult
world. One way or another, all
children’s books have to negotiate that
space.”
What is particular and universal of
children’s books?
• It shows the way in which children’s
books are eternal and how they emerge
from the society in which they are
conceived.
– (some stories) can cross cultures and time
periods and be easily understood by all
What is particular and universal of children’s books?
• They reflect the actual world that
children inhabit but also:
– act as vehicles to show how different
childhood might be
– carry the twin ambitions of providing
entertainment while offering educational or
cultural improvement
What is Young Adult Literature?
• anything that readers between the
approximate ages of twelve and eighteen
choose to read either for leisure reading or to
fill school assignments
(Young adults, according to the Educational
Resources Information Clearinghouse
(ERIC), are those between the ages of 18
and 22, whereas the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), refers to
young adults, ages 21 through 25.)
Yesterday and Today in the
World of Children’s Books
A) Early Books
– began in the church and were written so
that young people could be made aware
of their relationship with the Almighty
– were moralistic and didactic visual
representations of what children heard
from their religion teachers
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
A) Early Books
• Monk John Amos Comenius made the very
first illustrated book for children. He called it
Orbis Pictus.
– In Puritan England and America, the God the
teachers introduced in books was fearsome and
even vengeful.
• First books were prayer books and simplified
bibles. (The New England Primer was the
first textbook used in the schools of the
colonies in America.)
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
A) Early Books
• children used hornbooks in addition to
religiously oriented textbooks
– these were paddle-like pieces of wood on
which was glued a page from the primer or
whatever textbook they were using
Hornbook
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
A) Early Books
• chapbooks, a corruption of “cheapbooks” and
were the forerunner of today’s comic books,
were reading materials that children secured
on their own to while away their time and in
rebellion against their strict mentors
– Cheap/crude illustrated versions of popular tales
and other narratives printed and sold for only a
few cents/shillings. The more forbidden the
chapbooks were, the better.
Sample Chapbooks
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
A) Early Books
• Pilgrim’s Progress, written
by the Puritan John
Bunyan, was religious in
content but entertaining to
children due to its
excellent pacing and
action-filled pages.
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
B) The Great Shift
 At the threshold of the Age of
Enlightenment in Europe, children began to
be regarded not as small versions of adults
nor as second class citizens, but as human
beings worthy of respect and the most
thoughtful consideration.
- John Newbery commissioned the leading writers
in his pool of talents to write books especially for
children. The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes
and A Little Pretty Pocket-Book were two initial
outputs published in the mid-18th century.
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
B) The Great Shift
– Newbery’s assistants invented the
battledores in the classroom.
• descendants of the hornbook and were also
used to stiffen individual pages of a book but
were made of thick cardboards instead of wood
and had three panels instead of two
• most distinctive feature was its content battledores did not contain religious lessons;
they had only the most entertaining stories for
the young.
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
B) The Great Shift
• Newbery effected “the great shift” in the
concept of children as readers.
– Since 1922, the American Library
Association (ALA) has given the Newbery
medal to the writer of the year’s best story
for children, the most prestigious of awards
given to writers for children.
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
B) The Great Shift
• In the early decades of the 19th century,
Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenway,
and Walter Crane colorfully illustrated
children’s books that were very popular
among the children of fighting soldiers
(when Napoleon was in a conquering rampage across Europe)
– Randolph Caldecott’s works have the
distinct capacity to appeal not only to one’s
sense of sight but to other senses as well.
– the ALA awards the Caldecott Medal to the
year’s best illustrator of children’s books
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
C) The Grimm Brothers and Other
Contributors from Continental Europe
•
Wilhelm and Jakob, the Grimm Brothers,
following the examples of Charles Perrault,
scoured the Black Forest for treasures from
the very mouth of the primary sources living
in its fringes
–
used the language of the “unkempt” and had
greater respect and authenticity of the narrative
artifacts, a greater respect for their source – the
memory of the ordinary German peasants
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
C) The Grimm Brothers and Other Contributors from
Continental Europe
• Hans Christian Andersen specialized in
the telling of literary fairy tales that had not
only the natural charms of such tales but
also his own distinctive brand of
bittersweet magic
– Example: The Little Mermaid, The Little Match
Girl, The Steadfast Tin Soldier
• Victorian Period – during the latter half of
the 19th century was deemed the golden
age of England’s social and literary history
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
D) Books that Cross the Line
Some books stand out because they have
done what had seemed possible to do:
cross the line from the world of adults to that
of children. The same is true in reverse.
Some books for children are enjoyed
immensely by adults
Examples: Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels,
Pilgrim’s Progress, Alice in Wonderland, Harry
Potter, and the works of CS Lewis (Chronicles
of Narnia) and JRR Tolkien (Lord of the
Rings),
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
E) Illustrations and Illustrators
•
illustrations spell the success or failure of
a book for children
-
-
•
enable the writer to convey meaning more
effectively
amplify the meaning and appeal of a selection
different medium used by illustrators:
-
oil, watercolor, gouache, collage of varied
materials, pen, shredded paper, pencil,
woodcuts, textile
example: Eric Carle (The very hungry caterpillar)
Yesterday and Today in the World of Children’s Books
E) Illustrations and Illustrators
 Different styles of illustrations:
• realism (The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward)
• impressionism (The Little Mermaid and The red
Shoes by Chihiro Iwasaki)
• primitivism (Adarna’s book, Ang Mabait na
Kalabaw)
• folk art (Albert Gamos and Ibarra Crisostomo
are among the best users and interpreters of
folk art in Philippine children’s books)