A Shell with zig-zag etchings is left at a site on the Solo River in Java. It is found by Eugene Dubois along with bones classified as Homo-erectus, Trinil 2 sart. Is the shell art, doodles, or a means for communicating?

Source: Jonathon Keats: in Discover July 2015

Also Smithsonian article

Explore more early artifacts on our Technology, science, math, engineering (STEM) timeline

An auroch bone fragment engraved with six lines is left at a site in Israel. Art, communication, doodling?

Source

Cave drawings: could have been warnings, messages, recorded history, maps, or Illustrations or prompts for

Oral traditions: see rock art dogs, bison sculptures, cave art pig,
Other media

• Notched sticks
• Rope quipu
• Wampum

What is writing?

Writing is a product of civilization, but it is not a necessary product of civilization.

Writing seems to evolve in a social group context (religious, political …) starting with symbols, which gradually became associated with sounds.

Also created hieroglyphics: sacred writings, which are carved or painted on to into bone, stone, hides, skin, ceramics, wood, bark, and later on papyrus.

Cuneiform is wedge shaped symbols pressed into clay tablets by the Sumerians who live along the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers, in Mesopotamia.

Stone is scarce so they use clay tablets and a stylus to create pictograms and ideograms. Such as: an open hand = peace, closed hand = war, crown, dish... Later started to use phonograms, which will also be used in European alphabets and Chinese characters. However, there lacks clear evidence of any links from Mesopotamia to Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, and Mesoamerican scripts.

Writing is a product of civilization, but it is not a necessary product of civilization.

Writing seems to evolve in a social group context (religious, political …) starting with symbols, which gradually became associated with sounds.

Also created is hieroglyphics, which are sacred writings that are carved, painted, and later brushed on papyrus.

Among the Sumerians tablets is what might be the oldest recorded story?

An English version of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Humbaba, and an image of a statue of Gilgamesh, in the Louvre Museum.

Sample of Gilgamesh in cuneiform.

Papyrus is made by by placing strips of papyrus crisscross on a flat stone. Then treated with a gum solution, pressed and pounded, polished, and added to a continuous scroll. Wrote with reed brushes.

Syria - evidence of the oldest encyclopedia?

The Library of Ebla (c. 2300 BCE) in northern Syria, has around 1,500 clay tablets.While not an encyclopedia as we know it, these tablets recorded the kingdom of Ebla's details on life, language, and trade. Syria's earliest comprehensive knowledge repository.

A clay pot in Canaanite is inscribed with six letters on two lines.

It may be the first use of the alphabet. It is believed the first of two lines spells the word ebed, meaning slave or servant combined with the name of a local god to symbolize devotion. The second line nophet, meaning nectar or honey.

What do you think the message is?

China writing on bones - Oracle bones Shang China

Source

• Hebrew and Arabic creates their first alphabet
• Phoenicians didn't have vowels. They borrowed ideas from the Egyptians.
• Greeks took some sounds from the Phoenicians and developed the first writing to represent all sounds with 24 letters.

See chart that compares early languages and the evolution of the alphabet

Aesop’s Fables are written.

Most are tales with animals who are the anthropomorphic (human characteristics) characters with a short story line and a moral (lesson or theme about what is wise or right and wrong). They have been popular throughout history from which ideas have been used in various stories and media to entertain children and convey moral messages. Aesop may or may not have been an actual person, however, legend claims he was a slave who gained his freedom and became a wise advisor to a king.

Through the ages they have always been accepted by churchmen of every faith and from the traditional conservative to the liberal enlightened who believe learning should be a delight.

Morals are worldly wisdom, presence of mind, knowing one's circumstances, and above all else, caution. It is curious that collections for children often fail to consider that to fully appreciate them requires adult experiences.

Many illustrators are drawn to them and create picture books.

His fables are translated into English in 1484.

Gutenberg sources

Chinese writing on bamboo, silk, and wood started as early as the Shang Dynasty (c. 1400 BCE) and became standard during the Warring States (5th century BCE).

Greeks created more than an alphabet. They wrote excellent literature, myths, plays, stories, and informational materials about politics, science, and philosophy. Characters included Hercules, Theseues, and the Olympians, ...

Codex, skins, vellum, or parchment was durable and easier to write on, fasten pages into a book or make a scroll. Monks copied many pages and put them together into books and manuscripts.

Paper originated in China. Its use spread to the middle east in 500, Italy 1270, and Europe 1300.

Paper is introduced westward with Arab trade and expansion. It becomes the preferred surface for writing and printing as it can be quickly made and in large quantities. It is light, flexible, and can reliably be printed on. As a result, it will replace the use of costly parchment, made from animal skins.

Book comes from boc, Anglos Saxon word for beech, since they carved letters into slabs of beech bark.

See nice history on development of the modern hardback book.

Chinese invented wood block printing to print on textiles

First Chinese book - Diamond Sutra - printed with wood block printing

Chinese invented ceramic movable type.

Aldhelm abbot of Malmesbury, First to write lesson books in either rhymed or question-and-answer form.

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote an encyclopedia on manners and customs, natural science, children's duties, morals, and religious precepts to instruct and instill principles of belief and conduct.

Scroll of Animals, Toba Sajo.

A story in textile about the Invasion of England or the Battle of Hastings (1066) told in thread - Sites for the Bayeux Tapestry

The Grolier Codex. consists of eleven damaged sheets of fig-bark paper that is an almanac for the planet Venus. It is thought to have originally been about twenty pages. It is written and illustrated in a combination of Maya and Mixtec

Source

Chinese movable type first wood then metal. Was tedious because it required thousands of characters to complete a book.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

The tale of Three Young Men and Death

Johann Gutenberg is the first to use movable type with a printing press (probably adapted from an olive or wine press) to print a complete book with this method. See STEAM timeline

• Movable type is first made with wood blocks and later metal plates.
• Johann uses small metal prisms (lead) that are precisely cast in large quantities so they can be set into a grid, used, reset, and used again.
• Printing and movable type also meant a choice of style of text from hand written (calligraphy) script, written by scribes to print used by printers with the printing press.
• The big advantage at the time is: faster production and lower cost. Later readability along with communication for different styles and tones will also be considerations for chosing one over the other.

The first book he prints is the Gutenberg Bible. He also prints and sells other religious stories and playing cards.

• Gutenberg prints 180, two-volume Bibles in his workshop in about 1454.
• Before that, books are copied by hand and the process takes about a year.
• Gutenberg prints his in about six months.
• Each Gutenberg Bible has nearly 1,300 pages and weighs about 60 pounds. It's written in Latin and printed in double columns, with 42 lines per page. Most on paper, a few on animal skin, known as vellum.
• His press, prints the black letters and decorations were added by hand along with bindings for each buyer's taste and budget.

William Caxton was the first printer in England. Some titles he printed were: Caxton's Book of Curtesye, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, The Boke of Histories of Hason, The Hitorye of Reynart the Foxe, The History of Jason, and The Fables of Aesop's.

During the Reformation (1533 Henry VIII) a new moral ernestness will bring new purposes for literacy ,and protestant authority will abhore many of these books published by Caxton.

History of printing in England and William Caxton is described in The Load of Unicorn by Cynthia Harnett (1959) a children's historical fiction book Bendy's Quest. (Map)

Hornbook had its main purpose to learn the alphabet. Some had upper and lower case letters, sometime common letter combinations and syllables, numerals, and the Lord's Prayer. It was a block of wood with a single parchment or sheet of paper covered with transparent horn to protect the paper, fastened with strips of brass around the edges, with tack heads to protect the horn from scratches, and some could be hung around the neck or on a belt. They were made to be convenient and indestructible.

Right. Miss Campion holding a hornbook, 1661. From Tuer’s History of the Horn-Book.

Supposedly Queen Elizabeth I used a hornbook and it's still in existence. It is believed she gave a silver hornbook to Lord Chancellor Egerton. Source

The earliest Robin Hood ballad known refers to itself as the talkyng of the munke and Robyn Hode. It is untitled, but usually scholars give it the catchy title of Robin Hood and the Monk. However, it is spoken not sung. Source

• The first major printed collection of these ancient poems is by Joseph Ritson in 1795.
• The first modern book of comprehensive prose in America is The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle in 1883.

Caxton's printing press

Aesop's Fables - translated and printed in England by William Caxton

First books that children read were written for adults

Les Contenances de la Table, by Jean Du Pre? first printed book intended to be read specifically by children, other than Latin grammar books a French book of rhyming quatrains on table manners.

Fortunatus written in German possibly by Hans Sachs

An English translation appears later.

Fortunatus, is a poor young man who gets a magical purse that never runs out of money and a wishing hat that can transport him anywhere instantly. He lives a life of wealth and adventure, but his greed and the misdeeds of his two sons ultimately lead to misfortune and tragedy, giving the tale a moral theme about the dangers of greed and material gain and the limiting nature of worldly riches.

Sir Thomas More writes Utopia, first use of the word, utopia, that means an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect: paradise, nirvana. Opposite is dystopia.

1539

1544

1584

Dorothy Penn writes that Mexico had a printing press in 1539 that printed booklets in Spanish to instruct Native Americans in the christian faith.
The book, Doctrina Breve, written by Juan de Zumárraga (first bishop of Mexico) was printed in 1544.
The book, Doctrina Christiana, was the first book printed in South America, Lima in 1584. Religous information translated into Native American languages.

Book of Martyrs (Actes and Monuments) by John Foxe

A history of martyrs who died for Christ is a fast paced narrative with woodcut illustrations on every page depicting the politics and history of the times. Including gruesome colored illustrations of martyrs being burned.

Source

First known printed picture alphabet is in, A Methode, or Comfortable Beginning for All Leaarning by John Hart. It taught reading, using phonetic methods.

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser - part one is written & part 2 is written in 1596

It is an epic poem celebrating virtue, chivalry, and Elizabethan ideals. Characters in six books represent a moral virtue, as each embarks on quests in a fantastical world with faeries, monsters, and enchantments. The Redcrosse Knight battles for holiness with a storyline symbolized by the struggle between good and evil. It is also a tribute to Queen Elizabeth I, portraying her as the ideal sovereign and a guiding figure of moral authority.

The Seven Champions of Christendom by Richard Johnson

An adventures of seven legendary knights of European nations: St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain, St. Anthony of Italy, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. David of Wales.

Each undertakes perilous quests to fight dragons, rescue maidens, and defend the faith against pagans and monsters. Their exploits celebrate courage, loyalty, and Christian virtue, blending chivalric adventure with moral allegory. Source

Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s writings are adult literature. However, children and middle level learners become familiar with Shakespeare as a famous writer. How he is presented to children is for you to decide. Examples at Shakespeare for Kids.

One way is to share phrases used in his work. He may not have been the first to use them, but he helped popularize them throughout the world.

• A laughing stock (The Merry Wives of Windsor)
• A sorry sight (Macbeth) As dead as a doornail (Henry VI)
• Eaten out of house and home (Henry V, Part 2)
• Fair play (The Tempest)
• I will wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello)
• In a pickle (The Tempest)
• In stitches (Twelfth Night)
• In the twinkling of an eye (The Merchant Of Venice)
• Mum's the word (Henry VI, Part 2)
• Neither here nor there (Othello)
• Send him packing (Henry IV)
• Set your teeth on edge (Henry IV)
• There's method in my madness (Hamlet)
• Too much of a good thing (As You Like It)
• Vanish into thin air (Othello)

Source Jamieson, Lee. List of Phrases Shakespeare Invented. ThoughtCo.

Don Quixote, written by Miguel de Cervantes, published in 1605, was an instant success and is considered the best Spanish novel of all time along with a second volume, published in 1615. Cervantes drew from his experiences to write a popular piece of fiction where a middle aged man, Don Quixote, is the main character.

Inspired by chivalrous ideals he gained from his literary past he arms himself with a lance and sword, mounts his trusty steed (old nag), Rocinante, and sets out to defend the helpless. In his quest he befriends, Sancho Panza, who becomes his loyal and faithful squirer as they travel La Mancha in search of adventure and glory to honor the Princess (peasant women) Dulcinea del Toboso. Cervantes has described his books as humerous tales to undermine ideas in other "vain and empty books of chivalry".

• More detailed information
• Online book in Spanish
• English translation PDF

Chapbooks

Chapbooks inexpensive books from a penny that were sold by peddlers (chapmen). They had 16, 32, 64 pages that were usually folded with no binding or fastener.
They included any stories that could be found retold in a drastically condensed version.
All literary quality or charm was lost, the grammar was often faulty. It was action and adventure that moved along a simple plot to tell the story.
Examples: -

• The History of Valentine and Orson, which is thought to be a fore runner of Mowgli in Kipling's Jungle Book's and
• Tom Thumb His Life and Death
• Jack the Giant Killer is a Cornish fairy tale and legend about a man who slays a number of bad giants during King Arthur's reign.

World's first children's picture book

Moravian bishop and educator, John Amos Comenius (1592-1671) puts into practice his belief in better education for children by writing, illustrating, and publishing in Nuremberg Orbis Sensualium Pictus, (The World Illustrated). A German/Latin textbook with pictures and descriptions of all chief things in the World. It was to entice witty children to it ... to stir up their attention... by sport, and a merry pastime.

It is translated to English in 1659 as A World of Things Obvious to the Senses. However, the verses don't translate well into English and the images were as Comenius's children experienced appalling suffering died of privation in a time of war, torture, death, disease, and deformities. While it may have been the first picture book, it had little impact on English schoolbooks.

The Project Gutenberg EBook - Orbis Pictus

1646

in England

1656

Cambridge

Milk for Babes, Drawn Out of the Breasts of Both Testaments, Chiefly for the Spiritual Nourishment of Boston Babes in either England, but may be of like Use for any Children, by John Cotton

This is the first book, for children published in the new world.

Later he added - A Catechism in Verse, which is thought to tempt children into learning. It begins: Who is the Maker of all Things? The Almighty God who reigns on high. He formed the earth, He spread the sky.
Its famous rhyming alphabet begins: In Adams fall We sinners all. Thy life to men? God's Book attend.

Illustrations include - a figure contemplating a tombstones and the burning of Mr.. Rogers, while his wife and 10 children watch.

A Token For Children: Being an Exact Account of the Conversion Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several young Children Prayers and Graces, Fitted for the Use of Little Children, by James Janeway.
A famous book that was long popular with the heaven-bent adults who ruled over Puritan nurseries. Twenty some stories where the main character is aged 5-15 and piously dies after an admirable life knowing the scriptures and believing in his or her salvation. Fiction to the Puritan mind was thought dangerous.

Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan - (part 1 1678, part 2 1684). Out of the Puritan world one great book for children. Bunyan read chapbooks as a child and one History of the Life and Death of that Noble Knight Sir Bevis of South Hampton, was influential in his writing Pilgrim's Progress.

More child centered he wrote, A Guide Book for Boys and Girls (1686), later issued as Divine Emblems; or Divine Things Spiritualized (1724) and printed as chapbooks. Its verses are grim by today's standards.

The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson, also Mary Talcott (c. 1637 – January 5, 1711) a colonial American woman captured by Native Americans and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed, in 1682. Six years after her ordeal, she wrote her book. It is considered a seminal American work read in New England and in England. It can be considered the first American bestseller. A narrative that was a resource for eighteenth and nineteenth-century writers: James Fenimore Cooper, Ann Bleecker, John Williams, and James Seaver. Source

New England Primer, by Benjamin Harris

It presents the alphabet with rhymes, and has lessons in spelling, reading and catechism. See Franklin's at Yale, 1764.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke (1632-1704) John describes his beliefs that children are rational creatures with individual needs, not miniature adults to be taught by rote. He believed in the effectiveness of learning through play rather than force-feeding of social values. That children are as blank slates (tabula rasa), which are filled with their sensory experiences, which they can interpret with reasoning and logic. He believes it is the responsibility of adults to educate children and discounted heredity and the idea all children are born with the capacity to learn.

His ideas are later ignored and overshadowed by Rousseau.

Tales of Mother Goose, by Charles Perrault or Pierre Perrault d"Armancour

In France Contes de Ma Mere l'oye or Histories of Long Ago or Tales of Long Ago with Morals, or more familiar Tales of Mother Goose is published by the French collection of fairy tales, by Charles Perrault.

It is questionable if they are written for children or adults, but children love them: The Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Blue Beard, The Master Cat or Puss in Boots, Diamond and Toads, Cinderella, Little Thumb, and Riquet with the Tuft.
Pierre Perrault d'Armancour the elder son of Charles Perrault is thought to have collected them.

A Little Book for Little Children, by T. W. is the first book to use an approach from the point of view of the child, rather than the adult, and combined teaching and entertainment.

Goggle book copy

Beauty and the Beast and other fairy tales, by Mme. de Beaumont

Devine Songs, Attempted in Easie Language for the Use of Children, by Isacc Watts (1674-1748). Moral Songs in lessons and verse were added later. Like about busy bees and quarrelsome dogs, wrote tender and beautiful hymns which didn't dwell on fearful God, but God as our refuge.

Like:

Hush my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed!

Appeared later in New England Primer.

And moral songs like:

Against Idleness and Mischief
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour;
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

How skillfully she builds her cell,
How neat she spreads her wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labour, or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,
Let my first years be past,
That I may give for every day
Some good account at last.

Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (1659-1731)

An adventure that kids found and adopted. Many copies are published and abridged versions removed may of Defoe's moral ruminations and focus more on a story of a shipwrecked sailor.

Crusoe narrates his story and describes how he stubbornly ignores his family's advice and leaves his middle-class home in England to go to sea. Through multiple voyages he becomes a sailor and a merchant, sails again and is captured by pirates, sold into slavery, escapes, acquires a plantation and prospers. Seeking more riches he deals with merchants and other plantation owners to sail to Guinea, buy slaves, and return with them to Brazil. However, a shipwreck makes him the sole survivor, who washes ashore on a desolate island. He journals his spiritual reflections of social problems and practical measures he uses to survive.

The theme of shipwrecked and adventure is later copied in 1812, by Johann David Wyss, (1743-1818) in his The Swiss Family Robinson.

Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift.

Worried how it would be received he first published it anonymously as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. Now known as Gulliver's Travels.

In 1735 an amended version was published with additons and changes by the publisher and maybe Swift. Most people have images of Gulliver awakening bound with tiny little people crawling all over him, wether they have read the book or not.

Mother Goose is translated from Franch by R. Samber and published in English as Histories or Tales of Past Times, Told by Mother Goose. by John Newbery, who discovered the importance of children's books as a potential market. With his success in the children's book market he includes a chapbook with each sale of Dr. James Fever Powders (1744).

A Little Pretty Pocket Book, by John Newbery

Demonstrates a momentous new approach to books for children, as one of the first books written for the express purpose to entertain and instruct children simultaneously. As the cover page proclaims:

They are moral letters, games, fables, proverbs, poems, rules of behavior, and a rhyming alphabet The style and tone is light and moralistic with many illustrations of children at play. Examples The ball and pincushion is an example of an early reward system, similar to a contract, where pins were inserted into the red side when the child was good and into the black side when the child did bad things. If all the pins were in the red side, the publisher would send a penny, if all pins made it to the black side, the publisher would send a switch.

One reasons for an increased demand of children's books is the rise in the number of children in England during this century. Which continually increased the demand for books as a means to entertain and instill high morals as well as teach reading and other information for further schooling as in his series of lesson books, The Circle of the Sciences (1745-1748). All increasing the demand for schooling.

Newbery's greatest contribution is to recognize children as an important part of the social base and a necessary market for children's books. Thus, providing a need to became serious as a publisher of children's books to meet these social needs. He is also the first bookseller to recognize the potential for producing games on a commercial scale.

However, he is also a publisher of media (books, journals, newspaper, chapbooks, leaflets, flyers ...) for adults and well respected and valued among the London literary, which added value to his work in children's literature.

The Governess or The Little Female Academy, by Sarah Fielding

It is considered the first English novel written specifically for girls.

Mrs. Teachum is a realistic character in a realistic setting who is a role model for teachers. As a governess of her nine students in a boarding school, she encourages the girls to use books to make them wiser and better in a way with which readers can identify. She allows some fairy tales and a softer approach to children's reading in and out of school.

Some later versions change the fairy tales to moral tales or omit them altogether.

Battledore, conceived by one of John Newbery's workers as a less inexpensive hornbook. It has three folding cardboard leaves. Ptinted alphabets, some easy reading, numerals, and woodcut illustrations.

The first modern encyclopedia, is published in 17 folio volumes of text and 11 plate volumes between 1751 and 1772.

First political cartoon

Emile, by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Proclaimed a new day for children in this book. Children should not be forced into a straight jacket of adulthood, but left to develop naturally at their own pave and by exploring the world on their own terms. Proper moral development by living the simple life. His adivce is more or less ignored by authors who took to more didactic stories (intellectual - Locke), or religion (Puritanical - who distrust all leisure and thought fiction was dangerous.). Each story is made into a lesson of moral information to inform or educate, not with the fear of Hell, but the pressure of information. Rousseau in educaton timeline

The History of Little Goodie Two q, or The Renowned History of Little Goody Two Shoes, Otherwise Called Mrs. Margery Two Shoes, is the first novel written for children, by Oliver Goldsmith who told the story of a virtuous and clever child, Margery Meanwell.

Offering children for the first time realistic characters in a recognizable setting to which they could identify.

As such, it is a realistic historical depiction of rural education in England that describes teaching young children, illiterate adolescents, and adults who mke up the underclass of the time.

Like many of Newbery's publications it inspired a whole new genre and books with similar plots and expanded adventures are published and successful.

Britannica publishes its first encyclopedia. It will continue to do so until 2012 when it publishes its last print version and goes to online only.

Letters on the Improvement of the Mind

Mrs. Hester Chapone writes letters to young women detailing their education with a list of recommended books, reading the Bible, controlling one's temper, managing money, and sustaining accomplishments.

Lord Chesterfield's Letters

Philip Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, during the reigns of George I and George II wrote about four hundred letters to his son.

Lord Chesterfield, who was neglected as a young man, wanted to be present for his son Philip. However, not being able to, he wrote letters. Beginning in 1737 when Philip was five years old and ending after Philip's unexpected death at the age of thirty-six. The letters are honest and often have funny advice on: art, literature, politics, manners, and how to get ahead in the world. However, Philip did not achieve his father's ambitions and secretly married Eugenia Stanhope, a lowborn woman with whom he has two sons. When Philip dies, Lord Chesterfield did not support the family so to support herself and family she sells the letters, which are published without Philip's approval as Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman.

The History of Sandford and Merto - four didactic volumes by Thomas Day.
Tommy Merton is the spoiled, helpless, ignorant son of a rich gentleman, while Jerry Sandford is the industrious, competent son of an honest farmer. His father realizes this and charges his son's education to Maria Edgeworth, four volumes later he will study and philosophize forever.

Mother Goose - First American edition published by Isaiah Thomas. Probably pirated from a Newbery edition.

See - 1697, 1729

History of the Robins, by Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) an animal story with talking animals. It is thought illogical.

Songs of Innocence, by William Blake (1757-1827), is published.

It is a book of poems for and about children. He illustrates each with a technique he calls, illuminated etchings, which introduce coloured pictures to the world of children’s literature.
1794 He publishes a companion to Songs of Experience.

See Songs of Innocence and Experience atGutenberg

Blog article about William Blake and his works

The Purple Jar, by Maria Edgeworth (1744-1817)
Follows the ideas of Rousseau and tells moral tales with dramatic realism, Her stories have real plots, sustained suspense and surprise endings that took some of the sting from the inevitable morals. However, the writing is so didactic that plots and characterization are weakened. Also wrote Simple Susan.

Samuel G. Goodrich (1793-1860) - book publisher and writter under the pen name Peter Parley. Writes pretty Peter Parley's Tales about America, biographies of famous men, which include information for science, history, and geography. Samples

Born in Connecticut, sixth of ten children, and his father is a minister. He begins to publish books in 1816. He decides children liked to read non fiction rather than fiction and fantasy so he writes and publishes books about history, geography, and science rather than fairies, giants and monsters.

He moves to Boston and creates the psydoneuym Peter Parley and publishes Peter Parley's Tales about America in 1827 for 7-13 years olds. Many of the facts in his books are questionable -

• Laplanders asks the advice of black cats
• Peter the Great worked as a carpenter to learn how to build ships.

The stories have a lot of moral preaching, prejudices, and biases:

• The Chinese are ignorant and superstitious.
• The frontpiece in his books illustrate an older man whhe was 23 in 1820 and 33 in 1830.

Jacob Abbott - wrote a series both for boys and girls. His girl series include

• Cousin Lucy, (6 volumes),
• Franconia (10 volumes), Juno (4 volumes), and
• Florence (6 volumes).

His boy series include

• Rollo In Europe, (10 volumes),
• Rollo (all others, 14 volumes),
• Jonas (4 volumes),
• Marco Paul Travels (8 volumes), and
• Rainbow and Lucky (5 volumes).

Original Poems For Infant Minds, by Ann (1782-1866) and June (1783-1824) Taylor

Best known today for - Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Teaches lessons in the manner of Isaac Watt in Devine and Moral Songs for the Use of Children, but more vigorous and fun-loving.

Poem
The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast
by William Roscoe

Kinder-und Hausmarchen, First volume of Grimm Brother's fairy tales by Jacob (1785-1863) & Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859)

They claim the tales they collected are from long ago. However, people thought they were taking literary license and their tales were more recent. For research supporting their claims, read -

• Fairy Tales Could Be Older Than You Ever Imagined and
• Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales.

The brothers inspire others to collect fairy tales.

• Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark,
• Asbjornsen and Moe in Norway
• Joseph Jacobs - English Fairy Tales
• Andrew Lang - The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book

Swiss Family Robinson, Johann David Wyss (Swiss writer). First page.

An adventure about Robinson family who leave Switzerland to settle on the other side of the world. They become the sole survivors of a shipwreck, make it ashore, and create their own tropical paradise.

Later movies by Disney and others.

Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, at 21 she wrote her story. Often credited as the world’s first science fiction novel.

A story about a creature, assembled from different corpses, by a scientist who abandons his creation. Alone Frankenstein reaches out several times for friendship. Over and over he is rejected, because of his unusual appearance. After repeated rejections, he sought to avenge the injustices he suffered.

Ivanhoe: A Romance by Sir Walter Scott

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving is published.

It includes the short stories: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle along with other essays and short stories he wrote while abroad in Birmingham, England. Both stories are early examples of American fiction which are popular across time and have had many versions for all ages.

A Visit from St. Nicholas or The Night Before Christmas, Clement Moore

Grimm's Fairy Tales are translated into English by Edgar Taylor

Mary Had a Little Lamb, by Joseph Hales

The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper

Adventure of hunters and soldiers struggling against treacherous foes and natural hazards on the frontiers of North America.

McGuffey's Reader, by William Holmes a Presbyterian clergyman.

Some samples

Gutenberg sources

All timelines of children's literature, in America, includes significant contribution by Puritan's on children's literacy in America.

Reading is crucial for Protestant religous beliefs based on, no priesthood should be between them and their God. Making it necessary for their children to read and learn. Thus, they are continually thinking about and providing for their children's education in their homes, churches, and towns. Puritans are optomistic that children born in sin could be saved with a relentless educaton. Instruction in doctrine, written for children and designed for their capabilities as the author's believed, provided by family, schooling, church, and writings of church leaders. And so it is that Puritans wrote literature for children: New England Primer, by Benjamin Harris, McGuffey's Reader, by William Holmes, Book of Martyrs (Actes and Monuments) by John Foxe, Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. A Token for the Children of New England, by Cotton Mather, and The Duty of Parents to Pray for their Children, by Increasse Mathers.

Holiday House, by Catherine Sinclair

A story about three siblings, Frank, Harry, and Laura, whose mama died when two laura and Harry were young. In this story they spend a summer at their aunt's holiday house in Scotland. Delightful characters, vivid descriptions, as they romp about and learn important life lessons.

Gutenberg source

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens; (1812-1870)

His writings are heavily influenced by his being forced to leave school at 12 years old and work ten-hour days pasting labels on pots of boot blacking for six shillings a week to pay of his father's debt, while his father, mother, and the rest of their children are put into debtors' prison. Source

Also wrote

• David Copperfield,
• Oliver Twist,
• Great Expectations, and
• A Tale of Two Cities

Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear; (1812-1888) is a collection of silly verses and pictures. Gutenberg source

There was an Old Derry down Derry,
Who loved to see little folks merry;
So he made them a Book,
And with laughter they shook,
At the fun of that Derry down Derry!

Wonderful Stories for Children - The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson Twenty some different collections are published by 1870.

Translated by Mary Howitt into English.

• The Tinder Box
• Little Claus and Big Claus
• The Princess on the Pea
• Little Ida's Flowers

Translted by Charles Boner

• Nightingale and other Tales -- The Nightengale is an original by Anderson
• The Ugly Duckling - is an original by Anderson

King of the Golden River, by John Ruskin

Is a children's fairy tale about three brothers who live in a beautiful valley and are visited by the magical King of the Golden River.:

• The cruel, greedy Hans and Schwartz - the Black Brothers whose desire for wealth leads to their land becoming barren
• The kind, gentle Gluck who is selfless and compassionate and helps a poor old man and a child in need.

A parable contrasting greed (Hans & Schwartz) with charity and love (Gluck).

Gutenberg source

A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, and
Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) are a retelling of Greek tales.

Gutenberg source with illustrations

The Rose and the Ring, by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

Gutenberg source

Tom Browns School Days, by Thomas Hughe

Is a classic coming of age story about the moral and personal growth of a spirited boy, Tom, at England's Rugby School in the 1830s. It highlights friendship, sports,and bullying (especially by Flashman), under the guidance of the headmaster Dr. Thomas Arnold as Tom learns courage, integrity, and Christian values. Semi autobiographical.

The Daisy Chain and The Clever Woman of the Family by Charlote Yonge.

Stories about moral heroines that rise above severe conditions to achieve the good life, usually in the arms of a handsome man.

Goblin Market, by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Is an allegorical poem about two sisters, Laura and Lizzie and their temptations, female desires, and redemption. As Laura indulges in forbidden goblin fruit, sickens, and is ultimately saved by her sister Lizzie's courageous sacrifice, demonstrating the power of sisterly love and selflessness over carnal temptation.

Its exact meaning remains open to interpretation, as Laura's consumption of the goblins' fruit mirrors Eve's temptation in Eden, representing succumbing to forbidden pleasures, often interpreted sexually.

Gutenberg source

Myths by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) are closer to the originals than Hawthorne and convey a grandeur tone and style more like the originals.
Gutenberg source from 1889 version

Also wrote the Water Babies a moralistic fantasy where a chimney sweep dies and is reborn in an underwater world where he learns the virtue of kindness and selflessness that he must gain before going to heaven. Gutenberg source

1865

1869

1872

Books

Jules Verne (1828-1905)

• From the Earth to the Moon - 1865
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - 1869
• Around the World in Eighty Days - 1872

The House that Jack Built, by Walter Crane

Is an enjoyable cumulative English nursery rhyme that repeats and builds on each verse with a new element.

Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, by Mary Mopes Dodges

Is a tale about impoverished 19th-century Dutch siblings, Hans and Gretel who face hardship particularly because of their invalid father. They persevere to help their family by participating in a yearly ice-skating race. Historically set in Holland with windmills, canals, and cultural details. It includes the tale of the boy with his finger in the dike as it teaches lessons on virtue, family, and courage.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) a mathematics professor at Oxford uses the pen name Lewis Carroll.

An example of literary nonsense. Alice follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole into a fantastical, nonsensical world filled with peculiar creatures and bizarre events. Where she encounters characters like the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts as she experiences absurd adventures, such as a mad tea party and a croquet match.

The story explores themes of identity, reality, and the illogical nature of an adult world.

Gutenberg source - Alice in Wonderland

Gutenberg source - Through the Looking Glass (1871), a tad more logical adventure based on a chess match.

Sing a Song of Sixpence, and other toy books illustrated by Walter Crane

A whimsical picture book with nursery rhymes and tales like Sing a Song of Sixpence and an alphabet of familiar characters brought to life with Crane's distinctive, vibrant, original color illustrations. A wonderful blend of traditional verses and whimsical artwork. Gutenberg source with illustrations

1864

1871

The Light Princess and At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

The light princess is cursed with weightlessness, physically and metaphorically, and must learn self-sacrificial love to find "gravity" (seriousness and substance) and become grounded.

At the Back of the North Wind, Diamon, a pure hearted boy, journeys with the mystical North Wind and learns life lessons, faces hardships, and grows in spiritual understanding and practical compassion.

1867

1868

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) published in two books.

When she submits it, the publisher tells her it is unacceptable. However, after his children read it, they convince him to publish it.

Set in the Civil War its popularity is maintained with the strong realistic characterization of four sisters. Unlike the more traditional didacticism or sentimentalism of authors of this time. Sometimes given credit or blame for attributing the use of blue for boy and pink for girls.

"Most remarkable children I ever saw. Which is which?" and Laurie bent like a well-sweep to examine the prodigies.
"Amy put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, French fashion, so you can always tell. Besides, one has blue eyes and one brown.”

See symbolism of colors and notes for pink

Gutenberg source with illustrations

The Magic Fishbone, by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Princess Alicia, is granted a magical fishbone from Fairy Grandmarina that grants wishes. However, but requires wisdom and careful timing to be effective.

Themes include; family responsibility, resourcefulness, and sometimes doing good deeds is better than relying on magic.

Gutenburg source

Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley (1828-1909) American teacher and author of this series of 26 volumes first published in 1868 about a pious heroine who is, burst into tears and swooned us into repentance.

Gutenberg source

The Brownies and other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing is a collection of moralizing tales that gave its name to the Girl Scouts in the U.S.

The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

Books

• The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald- Princess Irene is the heroine in this literary fairy tale. Its sequel The Princess and the Curdie
• Sing-Song, by Christina Rossetti

St. Nicholas

Scribner's Illustrated Magazine for Girls and Boys, edited by Mary Mapes Dodge

Books

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens (November 30 1835 (Haley's Comet -1910). He took the pen name Mark Twain which on the river means 2 fathoms or 12 feet, which is the depth of water that is safe or on the edge of safety or danger. He spoke for better treatment of Blacks, women's right to vote, against imperialism, against the savage treatment of people around the world, and the need to be taught over descrimination, and what it is to be human.

Also:

• The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, 1873
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876 (third person)
• The Prince and the Pauper, 1881
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884 (first person)
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889

Source

Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell

Books

Under the Window, by Kate Greenaway

Books

The Diverting History of John Gilpin, or John Gilpin's Ride,illustrated by Randolph Caldecott

Books

The Peterkin Papers, Peterkin Family, Lucretia Hale (1820-1900);The Lady from Philadelphia.

Books

The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, by Margaret Sidney pseudonym for Harriet Lothrop

Books

Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings: The Folklore of the Old Plantation by Joel Chandler

Books

Treasure Island, by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Gutenberg source

Others

• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle. There are many Robin Hood books that have been written. The first may have been published in 1770 with many to follow. Pyle's is the first published in the United States for children. Source
• The Adventures of Pinocchio. Carlo Collodi (Italian writer) A memorable story with interesting symbolism. Many movies with interesting and sometimes frightening scenes.
• Nights with Uncle Remus, by Joel Chandler

Books

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was first published in the United Kingdom in 1884 and in the United States in 1885. A story of Huck and Jim, told in the first person by Huck and written in Southern American dialect of the mid 1800's. While the setting is during slavery it was written after the Civil War and the 14th Amendment was ratified (1868) over a period of time when Sam stopped writing it for five years and revisited the Mississppi Valley. It is thought Samuel Clemens wanted to make a statement about what he thought was the failure on the rejection of racist thinking. Some opposed and banned it for its use of language, dialect that was thought a poor example, and behaviors that were thought to celebrate a bad boy image. Others celebrated the humanization of a Black person, the rejection of slavery and Blacks as 3/5 a person, and as Langston Hughes noted, it took the romance out of slavery. Instead of being racist it is a story of the unlearning of racism. Source
• Heidi: Her Young Years of Wandering and Learning, (1881) Johanna Spyri (Swiss writer) First English translation. Popularized in 1937 movie by Shirley Temple.

A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Little Lord Fauntleroy, by Frances Hodgson Burnett born in England and resettled in the United States.

The Happy Prince and other Tales, by Oscar Wilde

The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Land; folktales

The Yellow Fairy Book (1894) - Gutenberg source

English Folk Tales is compiled by Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916); followed by Indian Fairy Tales (1892), Celtic Fairy Tales (1892), More English Fairy Tales (1894), and More Celtic Fairy Tales (1894), and, Europa's Fairy Book (1916)

1891

Carnegie Hall opens, May 5, 1891, with a concert featuring Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He was there five nights. On his 51^st birthday, May 7^th he conducted his Suite No. 3. Source

Books

• 1891 or 1892 Pinocchio, Translated C. Collodi penname for Carlo Lorenzini (1826-1890);
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, may be the first best known series of books and stories with the same characters. Arthur Conan Doyle, published his first story, A Study in Scarlet, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual (magazine) in 1887. In 1891, the series of Holmes stories began: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in 1894, The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1905, and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes included stories from 1921-1927. All told Doyle wrote four novels and 58 short stories.

Books

The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is a story of a boy (Mowgli) raised by wolves and growing up in British India. Themes include social ideas, justice, and a natural order of life in a jungle setting. Considered by many the best of his pieces. See also his later Just So Stories (1902).

Books

The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells is recognized by some as the first science fiction novel ever published.

The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells is recognized by some as the first science fiction novel ever published. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Pearson's Magazine in 1897 and in the US. by Cosmopolitan magazine in 1898. Later as a book in London by William Heinemann in 1898.

Long before the Wright brothers took flight, H.G. Wells has Martians arrive in cylinders, land in England, spread around the world to feed off of humans, aided with heat ray weapons.

The Martians he wrote:

"heads—merely heads,” with “a pair of very large dark-colored eyes,” a “fleshy beak,” and “whiplike tentacles about the mouth".

The plot focuses on mass histeria with an overall theme about the fraility of life. Book source

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles broadcast an adaptation of The War of the Worlds, with the Martians landing in New Jersey, on his radio program, The Mercury Theatre. The broadcast created hysteria among some of its listeners.

Virginia OHanlan wrote the Sun editor and asked, "Is there a Santa Claus?" the editors reply ...
Yes Virginia A thousand times yes ... First printed September 21, 1897, in The New York Sun.

Books

Wild Animals I have Known, by Ernest Thompson Seton (Canadian writer) along with another Canadian writer Charles G. D. Roberts who wrote Red Fox may have been the first to write realistic animal stories.

Books

Stalky and Company, by Rudyard Kipling

Books

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. The George M. Hill Publishing Co.: Chicago. Born May 15, 1856 in Chittennango, NY died 1919.
The film is better known than the book and many believe its visual imagery and powerful characterization make it superior to the book.
Interesting site The Oz Club

Book

Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter set the standard for illustrations in children's books. She believed that when writing for children one should have something to say and say it in simple direct language. She also wrote diaries in code, sketched fungi and raised prize-winning sheep. Source

Peter the Rabbit - Gutenberg.org text and images

Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is a collection of children’s animal fables related to poems by Rudyard Kipling. Fables with creative descriptions of how different animals acquired physical characteristics, like how a leopard got its spots.

Books

• John Crow's Garden, by L. Leslie Brooke
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, by Kate Douglas Wiggins made into a popular 1930's shirley Temple Film both have a sentimental tone and moralizing.
• Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, J. M. Barrie first written as a play and later as a story Peter and Wendy (1911) Barrie is credited with the invention of the name Wendy.
• The Call of the Wild by Jack London. First published in The Saturday Evening Post in four editions.
  • Written in the first person or dog
  • Set in1890's in Yukon, Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush
  • Plot - With sled dogs in high demand, Buck, a St. Bernard Scotch Collie mix is stollen in California and sold as a sled dog in Alaska. He is forced to survive with his instincts and become the top dog and leader in the wild.

Books

• The Bobbsey Twins or Merry Days Indoors and Out, by Howard Garis
• Ann of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canadian writer)
• Freckles, by Gene Stratton Porter. Great adventure story about a young boy hired to patrol the Limberlost forest and be on the look out for lumber poachers. Gene's description of the animals and plants is great for anyone who loves being outdoors. See also A Girl of the Limberlost 1909

Books

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

Book

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter

• Great story about a young girl, Elnora Comstock, growing up in the Limberlost Swamp in Onabasha (fictional town maybe base, Geneva, Indiana) in the early 1900's. We learn she is an independent enterprising young women who raises herself as her mother is suffering from the death of her husband and Elnora’s father. The story beings in the summer, as Elnora enters high school. As a freshman. The plot describes her struggle to go to school using the resources of the Limberlost and her ingenuity. The healing of her family, from her father’s death, adoption of Billy, social settings in school, dealing with your desires, marriage, and her stedfast desire to resolve a failed engagement with grace and honor. Characters include: Mrs Comstock, Aunt Margret, Uncle Wesley, Billy, Bird Women, Philip, Polly, Edith, Hart, Freckles, & Angel.
  Gene Stratton Porter made the Limberlost Swamp famous in the early 20th century, where she lived for years on its periphery, wrote about it and its environment, which she lobbied unsuccessfully against its destruction. See more about her and the Limberlost.

Books

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a romantic piece rich in symbolism.

Books

Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter Made into the Walt Disney film in the 1950's and Black musical made-for-television. Have a sentimental tone and moralizing.

First separate children's book department was established by Macmillan Company. The book department was headed by Louise Seaman who published a wide variety of informational books. Other children's book departments were created from 1920-1940

Book

The Ransom of Red Chief, O. Henry

Books

• The Story of Dr. Dolittle, Hugh Lofting
• The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting won the second Newbery Medal Award

Scholastic magazine is first published from the home of Maurice R. (Robbie) Robinson. For the purpose to: Explain things to kids.

Book

The Story of Mankind, written and illustrated by Hendrik Willem Van Loon in 1921.

• It was the first winner of the Newbery Medal Award in 1922.
• The Story of Mankind, was published by Horace Liveright, an adult book publisher.
• It is one of the very few nonfiction winners of a Newbery Medal Award and the only history book. Other nonfiction books are biographies.

Book

The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams Bianco

Nanook of the North is considered the first nonfiction or documentary feature length film. Robert Flaherty lived with the Canadian Eskimos for years when he decided to make his film. A French fur company financed his production. He used film he previously shot and developed new equipment and methods to capture additional shots over one year. Including extreemly cold weather. Filming recorded events as they happened and staged scenes to fit with his narrative. Source

Book

Bambi, by Felis Salten (German writer) Disney Movie increased it's popularity

The first Hornbook Magazine was published

BookWhen We Were Very Young, A. A. Milne

Book

Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne about Milne's own son. Written to interest young children and adults.

Doubleday starts a children's book department

Book series

• The Hardy Boys is first published, The House on the Cliff, and becomes a mystery series where the brothers Frank and Joe Hardy solve mysteries adults are unable to solve. Edward Stratemeyer created the charaters and series and publishes many books under the pen name, Franklin W. Dixon. The series is successful in a variety of media: books, TV, comics, video games, and movies. See more
• First Freddy book, To and Again, by Walter R. Brooks is a chapter book where a group of barnyard characters have adventures as the title of each book suggests. Walter writes 26 Freddy books from 1927 - 1958.
  In his third book, Freddy the Detective, written in 1932. Freddy the pig, assumes the role as the main character, Simon, the rat, is introduced as the antagonist, and the detective role becomes one Freddy will often assume with the use of wit and logic to solve problems in other books. The stories have interesting plots, humorous dialogue, and a literary style unique in animal stories for when they were written and now.

Books

• Millions of Cats, Wanda Gag
• Abe Lincoln Grows Up, Carl Sandburg

Book

Hitty, Her First Hundren Years, Rachel Field

Book series

First Nancy Drew mystery book The Secret of the Old Clock is published.

Carolyn Keene is a pen name for the many authors of the series.

The publisher, Edward Stratemeyer, imagined a series as successful as the The Hardy Boys for the female half of the young-adult book empire. Stratemeyer, however, cast Nancy in a traditional female role. However, Mildred Wirt, who wrote 23 of the early 30 books, authored Nancy as a young independent woman that becomes a favorite of the readers and viewers of her adventures in books and other media. See more

Books

Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her stories are about a central American plains frontier family life with a strong nuclear family.
Other books:

• On the Way Home (1962),
• The First Four Years, (1971)

Book

The Story of Babar, Jean de Brunhoff

Books

• The Invincible Louisa, the Life of Louisa May Alcott, Cornelia Meigs one of few nonfiction (biography) to win Newbery medal award (1934)
• Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers The 1964 Disney movie is much different.

Book

Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryric Brink

Books

• And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, Dr. Seuss's first book. There were many more over the next fifty plus years.
• Hobbit, John Ronald Reuel Tolkein - map
• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck. Tragic fiction about two out of work ranch workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, who travel California in search of jobs during the Great Depression. Spark notes.
• The White Stag, Kate Seredy. Epic legend of the migration of the Huns and Magyars from Asia to Europe. Rhythmic prose and & sketches. Newbery winner. Cover & first page. Myth & Legend Unit based on The White Stag

First Caldecott Medal awarded.

First Superman comic book sells for 10 cents.

One will be sold at auction on February 2, 2010 for for $1,000,000.

Another will be sold in 2024 for $6 million.

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles broadcast an adaptation of H. G. Wells book, The War of the Worlds printed in 1897 with Martians landing in New Jersey, on his radio program, The Mercury Theatre.

Books

• Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans
• Daniel Boone, James Daugherty. One of a few nonfiction (biography) to win Newbery Medal Award (1940).

Books

• Call It Courage, Armstrong Sperry
• Abraham Lincoln, the picture book biography Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire won the Caldecott Medal in 1940. The book doesn't mention Lincoln's assasination. It ends at the end of the Civil War and Lincoln sits down to rest in his rocking chair.

Books

• Indian Captive, The Story of Mary Jemison, Lois Lenski
• Make Way for Ducklings, Robert McCloskey

Book

The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton

Books

• Little Navajo Bluebird, Ann Nolan Clark
• Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes

Books

• Rabbit Hill, Rabbit Lawson
• One God: The Ways We Worship Him, photo illustrated nonfiction book of rituals of the major religions in America

Books

• Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren (Swedish writer) about a girl with superhuman strength, complete independence, and strong character.
• Animal Farm, George Orwell, is set in a dystopian society. However, the plot and setting begins as a utopian society that soon becomes clear that the price for a utopian, perfect, society is ... well, the theme of the book.

Books

• Stone Soup, Marcia Brown
• Discovering Designs, Marion Downer photo illustrated nonfiction about patterns found in nature and in art

Howdy Doody (puppet) and Buffalo Bob. First kids TV superstars on the Howdy Doody Show.

Crusader Rabbit was drawn for an animated TV show. Creator, Jay Ward, later created the longer remembered, Rocky and His Friends

Book

1984. - George Orwell sets 1984 and Animal Farm in dystopian societies. Phrases from these books include Orwellian society and Big Brother. Along with memorable quotes. Such as: Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.

Book

• Narnia Chronicles, C. S. Lewis. Are Christian allegories beginning with the book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Published the series from 1950-1956
• Henry Huggins, Beverly Cleary

Books

• Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger is a book for adolescents. It was the beginning of a realistic style that deals with real world problems with all the blemishes and harsh realities of life. Not a sterile, everything is great, world.
• Amos Fortune, Free Man, Eliz abeth Yates. One of few nonfiction (biography) to win the Newbery Medal award (1934).
• We of Nagasaki, Dr. Takashi Nagai. Takashi records first person stories of different survivors of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. It is set in the days before and after the bombing. Each chapter can stand alone with each being a different person's story. Each from their point of view from different geographical places, starting from several miles from ground zero with each story closer to ground zero. The first story from the book is included in the Galaxy Houghton Mifflin basil reader for sixth grade (1971): Child of Nagasaki, a first person account by Kayano, Dr. Nagai’s daughter, Kayano.

Books

• Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank, autobiography.
• Charlotte's Web, E. B. White - analysis as quality fiction
• The Biggest Bear, Lynd Ward

Winky Dink and You. First interactive TV program for kids. Viewers put a piece of plastic over the TV and drew on it with crayons to help Winky solve problems.

Books

• The Borrowers, Mary Norton
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a dystopian novel where books are outlawed burned when found, hence, the title: derived from the temperature at which paper catches fire. Spark notes

Books

• Lord of the Flies by: William Golding is fiction that unfortunately has too often been considered as a reality of human nature. For a real life example of human nature, consider what acytually happens in 1965 when Mano Totau and five of his friends recklessly set off for Fiji and became stranded on the island of Ata, an uninhabited speck in the Pacific Ocean. Discover how they worked together to survive for 15 months. Investigate a real Lord of the Flies story.

The movie Gojira (coined from gorira (gorilla) & kujira (whale) and home environment and in turn the creature destroys Tokyo. Inspired by a March 1954 U.S. nuclear weapons teat at Bikini Atoll that produces 2.5 times the radioactive fallout expected. The radiation radiates tuna and 23 crew members of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru who suffer acute radiation sickness. Over the next 60 years Godzilla will increase in size as shown in this diagram:

Source Science May 31, 2019

• Eloise, Kay Thompson (actress, composer, and singer) illustrated by Hilary Knight who uses black and white illustrations with pink highlights. Is credited for expanding the meaning of pink to include mischievous. The story is set in the Plaza a New York hotel with many famous guests. Eloise is a mischievous six year old girl who lives by: Getting bored is not allowed. Released as an adult book. Eloise’s pranks and antics make the book controversial for children. Other characters include her nanny, dog (Weenie), and turtle (Skipperdee). Additional books include: Eloise in Paris, Eloise at Christmas, Eloise in Moscow, and Eloise Takes a Bawth. Interesting facts about Eloise.
• Carry On Mr Bowditch, Jean Latham. One of few nonfiction (biography) to win Newbery Medal award (1956).
• What's Inside?, May Garelick. A photo illustrated nonfiction book that shows a step-by-step birth of a gosling.
• Men, Microscopes, and Living Things, Katherine Shippen. Color symbolism fact sheet and activity to investigate color and culture

Captain Kangaroo, the Captain, Mr. Greenjeans, Bunny rabbit, and other friends offered morality lessons, for 30 years.

Mickey Mouse Club. Kids soap opera for daily after school viewing.
First teen TV idols Annettte Funnecello, Jimmie Dodd, Bobby Burgess, Cubby O'Brien, Doreen Tracy, Karen Pendleton, Lonnie Burr, and Sharon Baird. Roy Williams was ...

Psychologist Frederic Wertham testified to Congress that comic books contribute to juvenile delinquency.
The general thought about comics ranged from reading them is okay, to reading them is a waste of time. That only the uneducated or those who never would amount to much read them, to they will rot your brain.

Book

Miracles on Maple Hill, Virginia Sorenson. First page.

Books

• Building Blocks of the Universe, Isaac Asimov
• The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel

Books

• The Cabin Faced West, Jean Fritz
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare. Kit Tayler raised as a independent young women in the Caribbean she must learn how to adjust to New England culture as she arrives on a morning in April 1687. First page.

Books

• My Side of the Mountain, Jean George
• Little Blue and Little Yellow, Leo Lionni - biography
• Words of Science and the History Behind Them, Isaac Asimov

Books

• Let's Read and Find Out series, nonfiction science books as a response to Sputnik published by Thomas Y. Crowell.
• A Bear Called Paddington, Michael Bond
• Island of the Blue Dophins, Scott O'Dell. First page.
• Inch by Inch, Leo Lionni, Leo Lionni - biography
• The Cricket in Times Square, George Selden & illustrated by Garth Williams. Connecticut cricket - Chester is found by Mario and experiences New York before returning.

Books

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis
• Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster. Main character Milo who discovers the Lands Beyond. Great use of language & literature elements to explore a theme of, education is valuable and essential for survival. First page.
• The Incredible Journey, Sheila Burnford. Journey of two dogs and a cat across Canada. Style does not use a personification of the animals. Uses realistic descriptions to tell about their epic journey. First page.

The FCC chairman, Newton Minow, declares: TV is "A VAST WASTELAND"

The Bullwinkle Show airs. Its themes and plots attract kids and parents who enjoy satire and creative writing.

Marvel Comics on November 1961 released the Fantastic Four. A series about four astronauts who travel through a radiation shower and attain super powers because of radiation induced mutations. First radiation induced superhero characters.

Newpaper

Dorothy Butler Gilliam becomes the first Black women journalist at the Washington Post. In 2019 she writes a book about her experiences: Tailblazer. Listen to Grio's interview of Dorothy

Books

• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L. Engle.
  • First page
  • Prereading & intro activity
  • Reader's theater chapter 2
• The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
• Pat the Bunny, Dorothy Kunhardt

Books

• Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
• It's Like This Cat, Emily Neville

Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Welcome to the neighborhood, won't you be my friend?

Marvel Comics released X-Men in September 1963. It was the first plot with conflict between mutants and normal humans. Where the mutants are forced to segregate themselves at a school for the gifted to protect and rehabilitate them. Professor X is the founder of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (X-Mansion) in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York. Characters include,five mutants: Angel (Archangel), Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey); Professor X and archenemy - Magneto.

President Johnson's, Great society program funded all types of children's books with nonfiction getting the largest percentage. Thomas Y. Crowell created a series of history books about prominent men and women.

Books

• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Ian Fleming
• Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh
• The Pushcart War, Jean Merrill
• The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander five books of high fantasy
• Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt

Books

Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander. The Book of Three and sequels

Books

• The Outsiders. S. E. (Susan Eloise) Hinton. Sixteen year old friends Mark and Byron struggle with involvement with girls, drugs, and gangs. Cliff notes.
• The White Mountains, John Chrostopher. Trilogy.
• Zeely, Virginia Hamilton
• A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin Earthsea series

1. A Wizard of Earthsea - 1968
2. The Tombs of Atuan - 1971
3. The Farthest Shore - 1972
4. The Wind's Twelve Quarters - 1975
5. Tehanu - 1990
6. The Other Wind - 2001
7. Tales from Earthsea - 2001

Book

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Konisberg

Sesame Street sets a new standard for kids TV and PBS home of good kids' TV

Books

• To Be a Slave, Julius Lester first book on African American history that won a Newbery Honor award.
• Trouble River, Betsy Byars later television movie
• Where the Lilies Bloom, Vera and Bill Cleaver
• Sounder, William H. Armstrong
• The Cay, Theodore Taylor. Survival story of Phillip, blind, and Timothy, West Indian, on a Caribbean Island.
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, William Steig

Books

• Small Worlds Close Up, Lisa Grillone and Joseph Gennaro photo illustrated nonfiction.
• Summer of the Swans, Betsy Byars
• Blowfish Live in the Sea, Paula Fox
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume. Movie - Released in 2023.

The Electric Company for kids after Sesame Street to learn to read.

Books

• Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Robert O"Brien. First page.
• Frog and Toad Are Friends, Arnold Lobel
• Moha Means One: Swahili Counting Book, Muriel Feelings
• Leo, the Late Bloomer, Robert Kraus
• That Was Then, This Is Now, S. E. (Susan Eloise) Hinton.

Federal subsidies for the purchase of books is stopped and many older titles go out of print.

Results in a stabilazation of the number of hardback books published into the 1990's and a significant increase in paperpback books published.

Books

• The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula Le Guin
• Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead George. First page.
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Judith Viorst
• The Marrow of the World, Ruth Nichols

Books

• Nana Upstairs Nana Downstairs, Tomie de Paola
• A Taste of Blackberries, Doris Smith

Books

• The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox
• The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
• The Valley of the Shadow, Janet Hickman

Books

• Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt. First page. Movie released in 2000.
• Dragonwings, Lawrence Yep
• M.C. Higgins the Great, Virginia Hamilton
• Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears, Leo and Diane Dillon

Where Do All the Prizes Go? Milton Meltzer, in Hornbook February 1976. Awards created on the heels of this publication: The Boston Globe-Hornbook Award for nonfiction; The Golden Kite Award for nonfiction given by the society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators; the Orbis Pictus Award presented by the National Council of Teachers of English; and The Washington Post-Children's Book Guild Award.

Books

• Lizard Music, D. Manus Pinkwater
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor. Sequel novella to Song of the Trees, 1975. Main character Cassie, sixth grader. Historical fiction seting is an African-American farmstead in 1930 Mississippi. First page

Books

• Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
• I'm Deborah Sampson: A Soldier in the War of the Revolution, Patricia Clapp
• Anpao: An Indian Odyssey, Jamake Highwater

Nickelodeon first children's network started and is commerial-free

Teachers in New Zealand’s were using oversized or big books for shared reading with their students. Described in Foundations of Literacy (1979) by Don Holdaway.

Books

• Children of the West, by Russell Freedman photo illustrated with archival photographs and nonfiction.
• The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende (German). English translation in 1983 by Ralph Manheim. Later several videos. A fantasy adventure with a theme of the value of fantasy, truth, wishes, creativity, and lies, in literature and life. Plot sustains a desire to know what happens to Bastian Balthazar Bux, across 400⁺ pages. Inspite of a lack of supporting plausible information and character development beyond survival.

Children's book reviewer Hazel Rochman, in an editorial, began to demand authors provide detailed notes on their sources in all informational books. By 1990 most nonfiction books included not just source notes but glossaraies, tables of important dates, suggestions for further reading, and other kinds of supplementary materials.

The Smurfs. Took marketing to a new level. First seen as sexist, but evolved into a message-heavy show by 1987

Books

• Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
• The Haunting, by Margaret Mahy (New Zealand writer) book won Carnegie Medal
• Let the Circle Be Unbroken, Mildred Taylor. Sequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry 1976

Books

• Water; The Next Great Resource Battle, by Laurence Pringle
• When I Was Young in the Mountains, by Cynthia Rylant

Books

• The Changeover, by Margaret Mahy (New Zealand writer) book won Carnegie Medal
• Dicey's Song, by Cynthia Voight

The Transformers - characters- based on a toy, plot violence driven, and theme of power are central to every show.

Books

• One-Eyed Cat, by Paula Fox
• Dear Mr Henshaw, by Beverly Cleary
• The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear, by Don and Audrey Wood. Picture book, Plot about a clever little mouse that tricks a big hungry bear to save his strawberry. Story element teaching plan

Books

• Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogan, by Rhoda Blumberg.
• Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan

Book

Lincoln: A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman one of few nonfiction (biography) to win Newbery Medal award (1988) first since 1956 Carry on Mr. Bowditch.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Action and violence seemingly reduced with an emphasis on character, teen turtles with Italian artist names, and fight scenes that appear more pretend than realistic ... How can it be violent if it's pretend?

Book

• Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, by Paul Fleishman
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen - a modern day Robinson Crusoe

Children's Television Act. Legislation that requires networks to broadcast three hours of educational programming per week.

Book

Oh the Places You'll Go, by Dr. Seuss

Mange graphic Novels - Tokyo Babylon: A Save Tokyo City Story, Clamp published in Japan. Story Nanase Ohkawa, Comic Mokona Apapa.

Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel, by Avi

Just Grandma and Me: First Living Book ever produced was released March 31, 1992. Original book by Mercer Mayer was printed in 1983. The Learning Company, Inc.

Barney - purple dinosaur. If you love him you're either under five or need something to keep a child occupied while you catch your breath. Marketing the purple reptile seems a fact of nature by now. Isn't evolution great Smurfs ... Barney ....

Book

The Giver, by Lois Lowry. First page.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - first girl superhero, incase you didn't know, she's the Pink Ranger...

Peter Steiner’s cartoon appears in the New Yorker.

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

In 2023 it will sell for $175,000, the highest amount ever paid to date for a single-panel cartoon.

Toy Story produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures in the US Nov. 22, 1995. Critics claim it rendered children films like Bambi, Pinocchio, Dumbo, The Lion King... extinct. As the script talks to adults, with its dry humor, as well as children. Paving the way for later filmns such as Shrek, Up, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wall-E, and so on.

Books

• The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963. Christopher Paul Curtis. Historical fiction about a family who travels South, where one family member becomes involved in one of the darkest incidents in American history.
• Phillip Pullman begins his His Dark Material: trilogy of fantasy novels
  • Northern Lights 1995 (published as The Golden Compass in North America)
  • The Subtle Knife 1997
  • The Amber Spyglass 2000
  • Later, 2018 adds a prequal Book of Dust

Blue's Clues. Dective work with an adorable puppy... yeah the color is?

The Children's Online Privacy Act (COPPA) was written to regulate the personal collection of personal information from children.

Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. An adult faerie tale. It is discovered by adolescents after the movie Stardust, based on the book, is released in 2007. The plot is an adventure, fairy tale, romance where Tristran (Tristan in the movie) is enchanted to break a spell put on Lady Una of Stormhold. His quest has him find, Star, help break the spell, and gain what he desires. Themes relate to love, promises, & commitments. More so in the book than movie.

The Children's Online Privacy Act (COPPA) goes into effect and begins the regulation of the collection personal information from children.

Harry Potter in Books was on the best seller's list for so long that a Children’s Literature best seller list was created.

Book

Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson. Historical fiction. Fourteen year old, Mattie Cook struggles to stay alive in Philadelphia during a Yellow fever epidemic. Author web site summary.

Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli activity - random act of kindness discussion ideas

ALSC - Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award for the most distinguished informational children's book published in the preceding year. Sibert is the founder of the Bound-to-stay Bound prebindery. The award is administerred by ALSC who also administer the Newbery and Caldecott

Yu-Gi-Oh. Let me see. I must have one of those cards here somewhere. Tv series based on the manga book of the same name by Kazuki Takahashi. The main character, Yugi Mutou, solves an ancient Millennium Puzzle, and awakens an alter-ego within his body that is able to assist him with gaming solutions based on the trading cards. It is first aired in Japan in 1998 and in the United States in 2001. Available on DVD Hulu. Yu-Gi-Oh Official web site

Wikipedia launches

Books

Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case. by Chris Crowe

Green Angel. by Alice Hoffman - activity analyzes Green Angel with attributes of modern fantasy, derived from Frank E. Williams three dimensional model for teaching productive divergent thinking.

The Tale of Despereaux. by Kate DiCamillo. novel & graphic novel

Facebook is launched by Mark Zuckerbert for Harvard students.

Facebook launches a version for high school students.

Facebook opens to anyone 13 and older.

Movie

Stardust see 1999

Book

The Mailbox by Audrey Shafer - instruction plan - framework to critically analyze different forms of multimedia. Includes example with The Mailbox and Homer's painting, Country School.

Facebook announces plans to develop controls allowing children under 13 to use the social media site.

First, 1938 Superman comic (10¢) sells at auction for $1,000,000 on February 2, 2010.

An other will sell in 2024 for $6 million.

Book of Dust trilogy prequal to Phillip Pullam,

• La Belle Sauvage, 2018
• The Secret Commonwealth, 2019

BBC TV adaptation of Phillip Pullam's His Dark Materials trilogy, starring Dafne Keen as the child Lyra, Ruth Wilson as the sinister Mrs Coulter and James McAvoy as Lord Asriel.