The popularity of Goodrich, Abbott and similar authors had an
effect on Sunday School literature. As the 19th century progressed, their
stories became less gloomy. Virtuous behavior and hard work were rewarded less often with
conversion or a pious death and more often with friends, material success and upward
mobility. Language became more naturalistic and a greater effort was made to engage the
children’s interest.
Thanksgiving-Day, written around 1840 and published by the American Sunday-School
Union, tried to incorporate the conversational technique used to good effect by Goodrich
and Abbott. A mother asks her young daughter Annie "What does the word thanksgiving
mean? Think a moment." The dialogue then proceeds
A. Thanksgiving? Why, giving thanks, to be sure.
M. That is right, and to whom do we give thanks?
A. Oh mother, I know; to God for all his kindness to us.
M. Can you tell me some of the things for which you should be thankful? |
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Thanksgiving-Day is a small book, of the type sometimes
advertised in the 19th century as "toy books" and more often referred
to today as "chap books." Toy books, often measuring less than 3" x
5," were written for young children. Their appeal lay in their small size, limited
vocabulary, simple stories and frequent use of woodcuts. |
| Anonymous. Thanksgiving-Day. Philadelphia :
American Sunday School Union, c1827-1854. |
|
The story of the Pilgrims’ First Thanksgiving in 1620 was a natural
topic for later Sunday School literature. An account given in The Child at Home, a
small newspaper published by the American Tract society in 1867 reads
| Noble men! Contented, thankful, and joyful in their wilderness home! And what
nice thanksgiving-feasts they had on venison and wild turkeys! I would like to have seen
them at their tables. Don’t you wonder what the Pilgrim children had to say
about the dinner? |
and concludes
| Thanksgiving Day is a good time, not only for happy feasting at home, but for
both old and young to remember the mercies of "our good God" to our fathers, and
to the country which we have inherited from them. |
The Child at Home was a newspaper designed to be shared by
the entire family. The Victorians valued shared family activities, including reading
aloud. In 1864, Catharine Beecher wrote in The American Woman’s Home,
| The most successful mode of forming a taste for suitable reading, is for parents to
select interesting works of history and travels, with maps and pictures suited to the age
and attainments of the young, and spend an hour or two each day or evening, in aiming to
make truth as interesting as fiction. Whoever has once tried this method will find that
the uninjured mind of childhood is better satisfied with what they know is true, when
wisely presented, than with the most exciting novels, which they know are false. |
 |
|
The American Woman's Home by Catharine E.
Beecher and Harriet Beecher Strowe. New York : J.B. Ford & Co., 1869. |
Beecher was a conservative, however, and society was changing rapidly around her.
Most Americans, by the 1860s, comfortable with moral fiction for children, were coming to
accept purely recreational reading for youngsters.
America’s view of children was changing once again as childhood became increasingly
romanticized and sentimentalized. Books of gentle humor, even books of fantasy and
imagination, anathema to parents of an earlier age, were being written for American
children. New types of children’s literature became popular : the domestic novel,
middle class in setting and values, with a young female heroine serving as a catalyst for
moral improvement; and the adventure novel, starring an assertive young boy, romanticizing
the freedom of childhood.
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NEXT CHAPTER :
From books for American children to Abby Morton Diaz,
Plymouth children's author |
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