Childrens Literature

Much more interesting to the unsophisti cated boys and girls of this period must have been the numerous ballads, which, circulating freely among the common people, could not fail to attract the attention of the young.

Among the better known of these old ballads were Adam Bell, Guy of Warwick, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and the prolific Robin Hood series. It was these and other mediwval ballads that have yielded such nur sery favorites as Jack the Giant Killer, The Babes in the Wood and Tom Thumb and that in the 17th and 18th centuries became so popu lar in the form of chap books, of which more presently. It is interesting to note in passing that those ballads have survived the longest which appeal most strongly to juvenile readers.

The Middle Having learned their letters from the 17th century chil dren had no means of satisfying their craving for reading save the above-mentioned Chap Books (q.v.). These cheap and uninviting leaflets, printed in type calculated to ruin chil dren's eyes and illustrated in wood-cuts that violated the proprieties and shocked one's taste, must have been very sorry things indeed. Yet, forbidding as they were, these pamphlets represented the first embodiment of popular literature, intended as they were for every age and taste, and costing but a penny each Though not written for children, these little tracts, whose popularity was phenomenal and whose vogue lasted far into the 19th century, put within the reach of the young tales of action, stories of heroism and adventure, nar ratives of peace and war, etc., which must have enchanted the juvenile reader of those early days. It was an unfortunate boy indeed that could not own such things as Jack and the Giants, Guy of Warwick, Hector of Troy or Hercules of Greece in the centuries of chap books. Indeed, it was in this crude form that such fairy stories as Blue Beard, Cinderella and other of the Mother Goose Tales collected by Perrault, French fountain-head of fairy tales, first appeared. Possibly even such classics as the Tales' were also peddled about by hawkers on streets and high ways, with all the lustiness of a town crier.

To this period, too, belong the stern and gloomy New England Primers, which long embodied the religious features of the horn books aforementioned. The general tone of the so-called children's books written in Puri tan times may be judged from such titles as James Janeway's for Children; an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children,' and Francis Cokain's was eagerly seized upon by juvenile readers, written though it was for their elders.

But, dull and forbidding as were these early attempts at children's books — the hornbooks, chap-books, tokens, primers, etc. — which reached their culmination in such works as Franklin's

The Period of The rise of real children's books — that is, books specially written for children—dates from the second half of the 18th century. It was then that such educational reformers as Rousseau, Froebel and Pestalozzi aroused that new interest in child hood which culminated in modern Child Study (q.v.). Obviously, before this general awaken inif to the spmial needs and problems of the child as a child, his reading appeared to in volve no special difficulties. One of the first manifestations of this new realization—the real ization that the child is not merely a diminutive adult, but a being with tastes and interests pecu liar to himself—was the founding of a chil dren's magazine (Weisze's Kinderfrevved).

But the turning point in the development of children's literature seems to have been reached by 1760, when John Newbery (q.v.), the first publisher of books for children, issued a small collection of nursery rhymes under the title of Goose's Melody.' It was five years later that Goldsmith, who probably edited the little volume just mentioned, published his of Margery Two-Shoes,' which is generally considered the first real children's story written — and it is still a favorite with younger children. But the enterprising pub lisher, assisted by Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson and lesser celebrities driven to hack-work, published hundreds of little volumes for juvenile readers, whose appetites he both stimulated and sought to satisfy. This prolific and ambitious publisher ran the gamut of children's reading, from young folk's magazines to grammar-texts and a 'Circle of Sciences,' a sort of compendium of universal knowledge. The tone of most of the Newbery publications, however, was still didac tic. Such titles as (The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, a little boy who lived upon learning' ; (The Whitsuntide Gift, or the Way to be Happy' • and 'The Valentine Gift, or how to behave with honor, integrity and humanity' —and they are not by any means exceptional — sufficiently the type of thing produced by ((the philanthropic publisher of Saint Paul's Churchyard," as Goldsmith once called John Newbery.