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TOWARDS DIGITAL STORYTELLING FOR CHILDREN

THE EVOLUTION OF STORYTELLING FROM THE MIDDLE AGES

1990'S: A DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

TOWARDS DIGITAL STORYTELLING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Robinson Crusoe

Chapbooks

A Little Pretty Pocket Book

 

1700's: Introduction to Adventure
Locke's philosophy reflected how the attitudes about children and therefore children's literature were slowly changing. In France, the writer Perrault compiled a group of fairytales which had entertained the children of Parisian aristocrats for generations and these were translated into the English as Tales of Mother Goose. Shortly afterwards, two adventure stories, Robinson Crusoe* and Gulliver's Travels, introduced a new genre. These were adult books but they quickly became very popular with children who, no doubt, found them a novelty amidst all the instructional and religious materials which existed for them.
Because of its popularity the adventure formula of these stories was soon copied and copycat adventures were soon being printed in large quantities in the form of chapbooks. Chapbooks* were poorly printed, but they were attractive, small, could be sold for pennies, and were in great demand by a public hungry for popular stories--the precursors of our pocketbooks. Itinerant peddlers, the first "corner cigar stores," sold them along with other wares such as ribbons and patent medicines. Printers fed the demanding public with books of ballad tales, romantic legends, religious inst - uction, interpretations of the supernatural, and historic narratives, not many of them lasting in quality. Chapbooks, or "penny dreadfuls," were very popular until the early 1800's and are a good example of how books had become a commodity. Entrepreneurs had seen a market eager for narrative and were prepared to fill it with whatever they could find, good or not (Demers & Moyles 78). (This was a portent of how narrative was to be affected by the tremendous demand for it in the 1900's.)
John Newbery, a writer and publisher of the mid-1700's, advocated a milder approach to the education of children and felt that they should be led in their search for knowledge. In 1744 he started publishing books for children which were intended as diversions, intended to both instruct and entertain. His books had gilt-paper covers, attractive pages, and engaging stories. The following advertisement appears on June 18, 1744, in the London Penny Advisor and heralds the era of children's literature:

A LITTLE PRETTY POCKET BOOK, intended for the Instruction and Amusement of little Master Tommy and pretty Miss Polly; with an agreeable Letter to each from Jack the Giant-Killer, as also a Ball and Pin cushion, the Use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good Boy and Polly a good Girl. (Norton 51)

(This type of marketing is so similar to what we see in Barnes and Nobles today that it is almost uncanny. Newbery was heralding a new philosophical approach to children's literature, are today's publishers?)

While Locke felt children should be led in their search for knowledge, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) believed children should merely be accompanied. His ideas are exemplified by the statement, "Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains". They were so radical that his Social Contract and Emile were burned in the public squares of Geneva and Paris, his books were banned from publication, and he himself was banished. Nevertheless, the ideas persisted and influenced children's writers over the next hundred years to write purposeful and carefully designed narratives which would "cultivate rational thought and moral judgement" (Demers & Moyles 121). These stories endeavored to make learning active, engaging and self-directed. (A similar approach to learning is strongly supported in the 1990's.)