ABSTRACT
Until recently it was commonly thought that a separate children's literature in The Netherlands emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, when Hieronymus van Alphen published his famous poetry for children (1778). This view was slightly adjusted by the appearance of De hele Bibelebontse berg [The Whole Meeny-Miny Mountain] (Heimeriks and van Toorn 1989)—‘The History of Children's Books in The Netherlands and Flanders from the Middle Ages until now’. However, the authors do not name any children's books from the Middle Ages; and from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they mention mainly didactic literature: schoolbooks, catechisms, and so on. There are only a few exceptions, such as the collection Kinderliedekens [Songs for Children] (1630).
