ABSTRACT
Children don’t so much learn about living through the reading of books: as Hoggart once described, reading becomes like living; even the most far-fetched of fairy tales, the most trite of cheap story-books are woven into the fabric of their everyday existence. A child’s viewpoint is today central to both theme and format, even in those books which still aim to teach children about life, as well as offering them vicarious living experiences through the act of reading. Books for children have always underlined, and often with a heavy hand, what society expects for and from its progeny in their personal relationships; but until only recently in the two hundred and fifty year history of children’s literature, books were usually written from an exclusively adult viewpoint. The demise of Children’s Friend ended the last link with those early children’s tales that sought to befriend their readership out of a grim determination to preach at them.
