#at least what im interested in re middle grade lit

[swordatsunset]

i’ve taken quite a few classes focused on children’s lit and it’s so incredibly fascinating! the evolution of how children have historically been viewed (in england and america bc eurocentric education unfortunately) is so interesting. i’m especially interested in early 19th century conceptions of children as pure/divine, because it creates this through-line of fear throughout the era of the very passage of time, as children growing up must mean them learning to sin and thus falling from their pedestal (especially true, of course, for girls becoming women). i have a lot of thoughts about how this carries over into modern views of children- parents so often joke and groan about their kids growing too fast, and that often stems from the reluctance of adults to be confronted with their own aging as directly as children force them to, but i’m curious about how those conservative christian views on sin and purity carry over into the collective subconscious on childhood

Oh this is soooo interesting thank you for the ask!! I’ve been nibbling on it all day but yeah, I find the ‘purity’ of children in these books so fascinating, always have (see here: the dick and jane books, which I had a copy of one (?) in my house and read, fascinated, at how otherworldly and strange it seemed as a grubby handed somewhat genderless arab kid who wore velvet pants.)

I think there’s this really interesting idea about like, the timelessness of children in children’s books? At least for early readers and in picture books... which is I suppose a necessary ‘evil’ of writing kidlit for that age. Discussing aging is difficult enough when you’re a little older and also most of the time lots of these picture books, at least in the modern day are more focused on teaching children to read, so there’s a focus on phonics, or action words, or how a person will construct a sentence (a book that focuses on different “I” statements, for ex). These are all more modern examples, I suppose, but I actually don’t think they differ too much from classical kidlit in that y’know, aside from a few more on-the-margins picture books, we tend to stay with much more sanitized topics, and sanitize children in that same way.

Also obviously the idea of the pure child is almost directly correlated to the idea of the obedient child, whatever that may have represented at any time. This is partly why I’m so fascinated with the changeling child, and the idea of the changeling as a whole-- though villainized, here is a prime example of the ‘desanitized’ child, disobedient in an unacceptable way.

Regardless, I also wanted to send an example of a book that kind of contradicts some of our ideas about purity of the child slash their agelessness!: Johann Amos Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus which is really fascinating in its very accepting vision of death as well as Comenius’ general outlook on education. Thank you for the fascinating ask, I’ll be nibbling on it for a while!!!