Introduction
Literature in its broadest sense means a meaningful arrangement of words. Literature could be on any topic of Current Affairs, Fiction, Science, Arts, etc. It could be also classified as American Literature, French Literature, English Literature based on the place where it has originated.
It could also be subject specific too, like Garden Literature, Science and Technology Literature. Among the various literatures, Children’s literature is one such literature, containing written material exclusively for children to be read by them or to be read to them. They include fables, folktales, fairytales, novels, poetry, short stories, riddles, and games.
The main aim of this literature is to educate and to entertain Children. Often literature for children plays a dual role as an academic and moral instructor. It must first create an awareness of the language and its structural pattern for enabling comprehension, as it simultaneously entertains the reader.
Traditional definition of Children’s Literature means just the printed words for young audience. But the advancement in this field has included the Audio-Visual Media and the evolving New Media too. Literature presented through this new media enhances the narrative quality including new formats in story telling.
History of Children’s Literature
The literary movements and the social events have often influenced literary content. But, in the case of Children’s Literature such movements have been very far and the instructional methods are improving at a slower pace. There have been significant influences from time to time resulting in varying approach and treatment of children’s literature.
The broad classification of themes dealt during the ages:
- Ancient Literature—Strictly from the Oral Tradition
- Medieval Literature—Didactic Influence from various movements
- Modern Literature—Liberal views and Critical analysis
Ancient Literature
The literature exclusively for Children’s originates from the fireplace under the starry night sky. These stories rely on the storytellers’ ability to create a balance between moral sermons and ease of comprehension. None of these stories have any written records and are lost in their time. Once writing was discovered some of the outstanding stories have been recorded for the future generation to enjoy.
In the ancient time the main form of expression was the line drawings found on the walls of the cave. Only a rudimentary oral language was present and stories were transmitted using gesticulation and partial sounds to the next generation. It did not have any readership classifications and was performed through interactive sessions between the storyteller and the listeners. The travelling Bards and Minstrels distributed this oral literature. With the creation of symbols to represent sound, the oral stories could be recorded for the future forever.
The birth of Language and the Science of language grew simultaneously, resulting in the birth of storytelling. The voiceless were given the power of voice to share and to retell in their own way of storytelling.
First Indian written work in Sanskrit exclusively for Children is the “Panchatantra” followed by the “Jataka Tales.” Epics like “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” by their narrative quality were adapted for Children.
On the Western side, the Greek stories for children were centered on mythological Gods and Goddesses. The Character and plot were of divine nature and were often used for propagating religious beliefs and customs. The Indian counter part employed animals to play the main roles to explain moral teaching and behavioral disciplines. The central themes of stories from these periods were mostly the religious figureheads of the period or the religious teachings.
Medieval Literature
Literature from the Middle age has been influenced by the rise of Christianity and the Renaissance movement. The moralistic preaching becomes more pronounced and heavy didactic tones are found in Children’s literature. The printing press allowed printing of multiple copies as opposed to meticulously created handmade copies in the Monasteries. Until the Renaissance the learning was only restricted to the Ecclesiastical people. When the doors of education was opened for the rest of the classes, the art of reading and writing was available to those who wished to learn them.
The earliest record of Arabian Nights is a fragmented collection that dates from the 800 AD. The collection grew during the following centuries until it reached its present form, written in Arabic, in the late 1400s. In the Indian subcontinent the influence of Mughal’s invasion and British occupation could be felt in the growth of Urdu and English literature and their themes.
With sea travel to different continents being possible stories had much more adventurous content in it. Influences were sometimes borrowed from varied experiences and travelling to different countries to study their cultures and customs. Many changes in children’s books were brought about with the advancing technology. The wooden block printing was replaced by moveable type printing. The books contained illustration for the first time in the 17th Century AD. Around this time onwards subject material did not have a heavy didactic tone to it.
The first books specifically intended for the young were Latin collections of the 7th and 8th centuries. The best-known works of this type, written by such outstanding ecclesiastical scholars as Aldhelm, Alcuin, and Bede, were employed as lesson books in the monastery schools.
Johann Gutenberg of Mainz introduced the movable type printing in Europe, in the year 1450. Until the Renaissance the main sources of children’s literature in the Western world were the Bible and the Greek and Latin classics.
A new type of children’s book, called the hornbook, appeared during the 16th century. It consisted of a printed page covered by a transparent sheet of horn and mounted on a square of wood with a handle at one end. It was for the child to hold used for elementary instruction.
One of the most significant developments in children’s literature was the use of illustrations. Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in Pictures), the first known children’s picture book, was issued in Latin in 1658 by the Czech Protestant educational reformer John Amos Comenius.
Contes de ma mère l’Oie (Tales of Mother Goose) is a collection of traditional fairy tales by Charles Perrault. The tales included ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Red Riding Hood’, and ‘Bluebeard.’ These stories were soon afterward translated into English. The name Mother Goose, however, became traditionally associated with nursery rhymes in England and the United States.
Works of moral and religious instruction written for children had long been numerous, but under the influence of Puritanism such works became more important than the other types. The popular adult stories were adapted for Children’s reading like John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels.”
In the 18th century the English publisher John Newbery became the first to print attractive, inexpensive books for children. Containing stories, verses, puzzles, riddles, maxims, and lessons, the books sold in England for sixpence each in little paper-covered editions. Newbery’s moral precepts were gentler and less forbidding than those with which children were regaled in the previous century.
Modern Literature
Until the late 18th century no clear distinction had been made between instruction and entertainment in children’s literature. A major influence in reducing didactic quality in Children’s literature was the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau.
In his novel Émile (1762), he was the first to point out that the mind of a child is not merely the mind of an adult in miniature, but must be considered in its own terms. One effect of the ideas expressed in Émile was a tendency for those authors influenced by it to overemphasize the guiding role of the wise and benevolent adult.
Romantic Movement and Its Influence on Children’s Literature
The Romantic Movement in literature made this liberal thought more pronounced. Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience(1794) by the English artist, poet, and mystic William Blake provide the first example of literature concerned with the essential goodness of children in the spirit of Rousseau’s educational philosophy.
Renewed interest in folklore, an aspect of the romantic movement, led to the enrichment of children’s literature with myths, legends, and wonder stories. The German brothers Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm, both philologists, made notable contributions in their volumes of stories known collectively in English as Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Published between 1812 and 1815, and circulated in translations throughout the world
Book like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872) Lewis Carroll, pen name of Charles Dodgson, with drawings of the original illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, were so apt that his name has become almost as well known as that of the author for carrying out the creative fairy-tale tradition.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure stories “Treasure Island”(1883), animal stories of Rudyard Kipling “The Jungle Book” and “The Second Jungle Book”(1894-95), L. Frank Baum’s creation of fantasy in “Wizard of Oz series”(1900), James Matthew Barrie’s ever young “Peter Pan” (1904), became classics in Children’s Literature.
Among realistic fiction are two titles that have endured as childhood classics: Anne of Green Gables (1908) by Lucy Maud Montgomery, about a spunky orphan growing up on Prince Edward Island; and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911), presenting characters with whose development, the children can easily identify themselves. These stories carried with them a touch of mystery.
Distinction between works written expressly for children and those, which children could share with adults, became more precise after World War I in U.S. Notable post-war children’s books writer and illustrator are Hugh Lofting, whose Doctor Dolittle series, (started in 1920), the tales of whimsy in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) by the poet and playwright A.A. Milne, the Mary Poppins stories (1934-63) by Australian-born P(amela) L. Travers, were enormously popular, both as books and in a film version It had a prim and proper theme with some magical elements in the nursemaid as their heroine.
The first Children’s Magazine made its appearance in the early 19th century and continued on to the 20th Century. Magazines such as the American publications Youth’s Companion, founded in 1827, and St. Nicholas, founded in 1873, were significant in the development of Children’s Literature
The annual observance of Children’s Book Week, begun in 1919, acquainted the general public with the importance of books for the young. Annual prizes were established in honour of the publisher John Newbery and the illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Issuance of the Newbery Award for the best American children’s book and the Caldecott Award for the best picture book, focused attention on quality in children’s literature.
The literature dealing with Children oriented subjects not only belongs to the print media but also the to Audio-Visual media. The contribution of this media has helped to visualize the images of the print media. The start of visual literacy began with illustrations of the characters. Later, when these characters could be seen in motion and heard too, it made them more appealing for the Children. The dramatized Television version of a novel often leads the young audience to read the original from the library.
Itinerant Storyteller 