Term Paper on History of Children's
Literature
Children of today are responsible for making nations of tomorrow, literature in
all aspects of live can play a very vital role for building and improving
nations, children’s literature are also very necessary and essential for
developing good culture and nation. Literature can tells us about the culture,
values, and behaviors of the nation/group. The way they think, and what culture
and custom they have, all of this we come to know from the literature of the
particular nation/group.
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History of Children’s Literature
It is very difficult to tell about the exact date and region of the literature
children’s beginning, but all of the researchers are mutually agree that it
started, many centuries back and usually all the literature is on oral form at
the early age, which means it was not available in written form.
The brief history of children’s literature is given below:
700 A.D
In the early age or beginning according to the conservative estimate, which was
700 A.D, some of the literature were about Arabian Nights, Aesop’s Fables, and
Robin Hood (The legend of Robin Hood over which we are still writing and have
numerous novels and work available on it).
1400 A.D
In 1400 century when literature are bit developed as compare to the early stage
we used horn books these were basically wooden panels with the alphabet, vowels.
Hornbooks first appeared in the 1440s and lasted for several centuries as a tool
for teaching reading and for other assistance.
1500 A.D
In this century we used folded paper booklet sold by peddlers (chapmen), which
appeared in the 1580s. The leading stories we had are who killed cock Robin,
Jack the Giant Killer, and Mickey and beanstalk.
1600 A.D
In early 1600 century we had religious stories usually and in late 1600 century
we had the all time favorite and still immensely popular The Cinderella Story
and perhaps we can there is not a single child in the educated world are not
familiar with this story, we already write so many novels, made movies, etc.
only just over it alone.
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1700 A.D
In this century the literature developed more, in era we had mixture of
literature, the great tales such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, John
Newberry’s “History of Little Goodie Two Shoes”, William Blake “Songs of
Innocence” and so many others are the creation of 1700 century. Nursery Rhymes
are the oldest known written collection appeared in 1774, in this domain we had
“The Mother Goose Society”. The other tales of the century are often depicted a
mentor or parent teaching through dialogue. A good boy or girl was often
contrasted with a bad boy or girl. The didactic tales were also wrote in this
century.
1800 A.D
In this century we had great adventure stories and family stories. The great
stories were Grimm Brothers-German Folktales Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood,
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Edward Lear’s A Little Book of Nonsense. In the
middle of 1800 century we had Hans Christian Andersen–Denmark The Princess and
the Pea, The Emperor’s New Clothes and in late century the great works were
Tales of Adventure and Family Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Lewis
Carroll’s Alice's Adventure in Wonderland (Another all time hit tale – An
unforgettable work), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Louisa May
Alcott’s Little Women (The family Story), Johanna Spyri’s Heidi Mark Twain’s The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Randolph Caldecott’s The History of John
Gilpin.
1900 A.D
This is the century where we improved lot of technologies and the people of the
world are more experienced (learned from past) and educated, apparently
literature can also change their mode, children are more aware precisely in late
era of this century, this era also called the era of “Information technology”.
In early century the great literature works are L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of
Oz, Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Rudyard Kipling’s The Just So
Stories,
Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willow, A.A.Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Award
winning Willem Van Loon’s The Story of Mankind. In the middle of the century we
have Dr. Seuss’s And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, Maurice Sendak’s
Where the Wild Things Are.
Today
In this current era children are often like to read and even almost all the
children love the fiction in literature, the super power shows in fiction are
very popular today. In the comic side, through out the last century and still we
have the most popular comics are Tarzan, Superman (All time hit), Batman, X-Man,
Iron Man and so many other which are immensely inspire the children of today’s
through out the entire world.
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