A study of the reactions of third grade pupils to the various types of children's literature that were available during three specific periods: 1900-1920; 1920-1940; 1940-1953

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Children and Schooling in New South Wales, 1860-1920

In the second half of the nineteenth century in New South Wales the introduction and spread of mass schooling added a significant workload to the lives of most children. The ideal of modern schooling placed children in a classroom, morning and afternoon, five days a week, for most weeks of the year. In effect the schoolroom became a kind of workplace, albeit unpaid. Schoolwork became a given for nearly all children, whatever their household's societal position. Socio-economic status, race and gender affected and mediated a child's experience of schooling, but they did not remove children from the school experience. The school system functioned to reproduce and impart values considered important by the respectable and powerful in society. The mass schooling program established remains in place today. Consolidated and extended, it nevertheless retains and continues many original values and functions, and still prescribes experience and containment for children.children, schooling, New South Wales

Children’s Advertisements in The Youth’s Companion from 1890 to 1910

This paper shall demonstrate that at the turn of the 19th century, the advertising strategies used in children\u27s advertisements published in The Youth’s Companion reflected the rise of childhood consumerism and formation of the ideology of childhood innocence. The years 1890 to 1910 were characterized as years of reform and the period is most often recognized for its role in the rise of consumerism in part due to the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution worked as a catalyst to force children into a new role in society. The mass availability of disposable income led to a decrease in the need for child labor, making it easy and sensible for compulsory education to be enforced. A decrease in a demand for labor led to children obtaining more leisure time which parents felt the need to fill with varying forms of entertainment. The children\u27s entertainment industry rapidly grew, creating intense competition among advertisers. By viewing these individual advertisements across a time period, trends featuring the target audience can be tracked with ease. By focusing on the increased sentiment of reading and expansion in new products presented to children, the advertisements reflect the formation of childhood innocence and the role of the child consumer. Altering the view not only of the definition of a child but the role of the child as a consumer, the advertisements in The Youth’s Companion perpetuated the societal changes shaping views of childhood

Ladybird Books: a study in social and economic history

The research undertaken for this project relates to the history of the 'Ladybird' imprint together with the company that produced these popular children's books. The period, from 1914 to present day, during which the books were produced, and throughout which the company operated, was one of great technological change in the print industry as well as one of great social change, and the company was shaped by many outside factors. In turn, its books were widely read and, arguably, themselves influenced generations of children. The research covers the books and the company from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Various factors that have influenced the company and its books, such as the British education system, the First and Second World wars, changes in print and communications technology, the British library system and bookselling practices, evolving social and political attitudes, the impact of the media and the company's competitors, have all been taken into account. The ways in which the brand has emerged and evolved is discussed within the context of commercial, social and political factors

Children and schoolwork in New South Wales, 1860-1920

In the second half of the nineteenth century in New South Wales the introduction and spread of mass schooling added a significant workload to the lives of most children. In effect the schoolroom became a kind of workplace, albeit unpaid. Schoolwork became a given for nearly all children, whatever their household\u27s position in society. Socio-economic status, race and gender affected and mediated a child\u27s experience of schooling, but they did not remove children from the school experience and its workloads. The question of what children in New South Wales did learn or gain from their schoolwork in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century is as yet, largely unanswered. What did going to school and schoolwork actually involve? Despite a substantive historiography concerned with Australian education there is little scholarship that specifically addresses these questions

Don\u27t Read This! : Lemony Snicket and the Control of Youth Reading Autonomy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Britain

This independent study investigates adult authority in youth literature in late-nineteenth-century Britain. Examining both sensational literature known as “penny dreadfuls” and the didactic magazines The Boy’s Own Paper and The Girl’s Own Paper, this project analyzes how rhetoric enforced middle class ideology outside of the classroom and shaped the youth reading experience. In an urbanizing, industrializing Britain, anxiety about social mobility ran high, and youth consumption of penny dreadfuls received suspicion due to their supposedly subversive content. This study argues that penny dreadfuls actually reinforced the social order, mirroring didactic literature in their construction of conservative adult authority. In order to demonstrate the similarity between these two forms, this project studies Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events as a way to approach the adult narrator in late-nineteenth-century texts due to its exaggeration of both sensational and didactic narration styles. As Lemony Snicket’s hybrid narrator deconstructs adult authority through postmodern techniques, he reveals that youth reading autonomy remained a fantasy in late-nineteenth-century Britain

The Reception of C. S. Lewis in Britain and America

Since the publication of the book The Screwtape Letters in 1942, ‘C. S. Lewis’ has been a widely recognized name in both Britain and the United States. The significance of the writings of this scholar of medieval literature, Christian apologist and author of the children’s books The Chronicles of Narnia, while widely recognized, has not previously been investigated. Using a wide range of sources, including archival material, book reviews, monographs, articles and interviews, this dissertation examines the reception of Lewis in Britain and America, comparatively, from within his lifetime until the recent past. To do so, the methodology borrows from the history of the book and history of reading fields, and writes the biography of Lewis’s Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia. By contextualizing the writing of these works in the 1940s and 1950s, the evolution of Lewis’s respective platforms in Britain and America and these works’ reception across the twentieth century, this project contributes to the growing body of work that interrogates the print culture of Christianity. Extensive secondary reading, moreover, permitted the investigation of cultural, intellectual, social and religious factors informing Lewis’s reception, the existence of Lewis devotees in America and the lives of Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia in particular. By paying close attention to the historical conditions of authorship, publication and reception, while highlighting similarities and contrasts between Britain and America, this dissertation provides a robust account of how and why Lewis became one of the most successful Christian authors of the twentieth century