ABSTRACT
As the parent of a small child, I was often struck by the plethora of animal stories on offer to children: why, I wondered, were contemporary children’s books populated with talking elephants, rabbits or pigs? Where has this genre come from, and why do we think it is so suitable for children? To answer these questions we must go back to the rise of children’s literature in the mid-eighteenth century, when the talking animal story began its career as a genre specifically for children. Like the fairy story, the animal story has migrated down the hierarchy of literary genres from adults to children, in consequence of an increasing polarization between adults and children. Adults were more and more seen as rational and cultured, while children were imaginative and primitive. At the same time, Enlightenment educational thought differentiated between fairy stories and animal stories, the one encouraging fear and superstition, the other encouraging benevolence and knowledge. Animals, even when talking, were allied with science, ethics and truth. Animal stories could bridge the gap between child and adult, combining delight with instruction. There was still a connection between the modern animal story and the fantastic talking animals of fairy story, but where fairy story had a large influence – for instance in Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies – it was modernised and made to carry scientific messages.
