This paper presents a selective timeline of Western children's literature, tracing its origins from oral folktale traditions through landmark published works spanning the seventeenth century to the early twenty-first century. Beginning with the collections of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, the paper examines how children's literature evolved from recorded folklore into invented fairy tales, moralistic instruction manuals, educational readers, and socially conscious novels. It considers the tension between escapist fantasy and didactic purpose, analyzing figures such as Heinrich Hoffmann, Dr. Seuss, Mildred D. Taylor, and J.K. Rowling to argue that effective children's literature teaches best when it engages children on their own terms rather than manipulating or threatening them.
Any timeline of Western children's literature is obliged to be selective. Because so much of children's literature derives from the tradition of folktales and folklore, it derives from unwritten forms of storytelling, and in many places and cultures stories for children remain unwritten. Folktales tend to be dramatic, with clear-cut morality and little in the way of deep characterization, and are generally located in far-off fictional kingdoms. Their stories downplay sex or complicated relationships, and instead offer a form of narrative that is at once mythic and archetypal, while at the same time remaining suitable for young readers.
The timeline begins with the two magisterial collections of children's fairy tales — the first in France by Charles Perrault in 1697, the other in Germany by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm — that represent the emergence of a modern children's literature out of the folk tradition of oral storytelling. To this day, many parents tell their children their own versions of some of the tales collected by these men. We have Perrault to thank for "Little Red Riding Hood," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Cinderella," among many others, while the Grimms collected German versions of those three in addition to other classics such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Rapunzel," "Hansel and Gretel," and "Rumpelstiltskin." The publication of Perrault's collection came over a century before the Grimms', but the Grimms took an academic and antiquarian approach to their material, making note of which tales they recorded had already been recorded by others, including Perrault. The timeline does not genuinely imply that there was no literature for children before Perrault — it was simply not "literature" per se; it was folklore or tales.
Looking at reactions in the wake of the publication of the Grimms' collection, an interesting trend emerges. Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark went on to produce numerous volumes of folktales not unlike the Grimms'. Andersen's collections offer such famous stories as "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Little Mermaid," "The Princess and the Pea," and "The Ugly Duckling" — which a reader might well assume were collected like the Grimms' or Perrault's, but which were in fact invented by Andersen on the model of existing fairy tales. Andersen thus represents the imitative response to the collected folktales of the Grimms.
Heinrich Hoffmann's notorious Struwwelpeter (also translated as Slovenly Peter or Shock-Headed Peter) is included here in order to recall the way in which children's literature was often more broadly conceived: as a manual of strict moral instruction, issuing dire warnings to small children about the potentially disastrous or fatal consequences of their misbehavior. The title character is merely an insufficiently tidy boy — but soon he becomes filthy, with long overgrown fingernails and a wild mane of hair. Hoffmann delivers obviously moralistic lessons intended to improve children's behavior, often with a gruesome warning. Little Johnny Suck-A-Thumb in Hoffmann's book ends up having his thumbs cut off.
If Hoffmann's work sounds both moralistic and bizarre, it is. It is not included here as a model of good children's literature, but rather because it represents so often the things that adults believe children's literature needs to be: morally improving or educational. On this score, we might compare Hoffmann with Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel). The Cat in the Hat was written as part of a campaign to produce educational literature for the youngest readers, with a simple vocabulary selected in advance by a panel of education experts. Seuss took what was essentially a curriculum plan and turned it into a rhyming romp, milking the limited vocabulary for as many rhymes and as much sheer verbal amusement as he could manage.
To some degree, Hoffmann represents the old educational paradigm — fear and disgust, the cautionary tale — while Seuss represents the new paradigm, in which the goal is to produce something that children will actually read and enjoy, without realizing that it is solidifying their vocabulary skills in the guise of telling a story. These are the major trends over the course of the timeline: it begins with the collection of extant oral storytelling, then moves into imitation of that storytelling (with all its sexlessness and supernatural devices), until finally the question is asked whether these stories provide a child with anything more than escapism. The urge to tame children's literature and make it serve useful educational functions may have come as a reaction to the escapism, flights of fancy, and supernatural elements in many of the original stories.
"Taylor and Rowling show literature's social teaching power"
Children learn from literature. It behooves us to make sure that they have the best literature to learn from. The early heavy-handed introduction of messages and morals in children's writing such as Hoffmann's could very well produce the opposite effect from what was intended, if a child reads a book that is openly trying to manipulate her and her behavior. The simple fact is that so many great works of children's literature — whether Little Women or Where the Wild Things Are — create a fantasy space in which the child is allowed to imagine what it would be like to be freed of adult supervision, while at the same time undertaking adult activities for the first time or getting a real taste of the solitude and self-determination that is the prerogative of adults in our society.
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