Charles Finger and the Fight Against Modernizing Children's Literature

This week I traveled to the archives at the University of Arkansas to read the correspondence of Charles J. Finger.

Finger was an early twentieth-century man of letters. He made his career writing and editing a lot of material: books for children, works of Arkansas history, volumes of popular knowledge for the "Little Blue Book" series. He even edited his own periodical. He is best remembered for Tales from Silver Lands, which won the Newberry in 1925.

My interest in Finger stems from his involvement with the Bellows-Reeve company which published.
Journeys through Bookland .

Journeys is a home library that was first published in 1909 and was edited by Charles H. Sylvester. The metaphor of Bookland fascinates me: the idea that books and reading make up some kind of geographical space and the reader is a traveler, mapper, discoverer. It is scattered throughout discussions of literature from the 1890s on, and eventually becomes particularly common in discussions of childhood reading.That is what first drew me to Sylvester's book set.

From 1933 to 1940, Finger had the role of managing editor at Bellows-Reeve. He helped update the supplemental reading lists for Journeys and wrote some newsletters that were used in-house and sent to subscribers. (The library was sold by subscription.)

I mostly read Finger's correspondence with James Keddie, who was vice-presidents of Bellows-Reeve. Their relationship was sparked by Finger's article "Some Notes ON Children's Books" from the Saturday Review in November 1930.

In it, Finger says "Time makes no difference in juvenile taste."  Neither does space.
Finger claims, "I have know the young of many peoples, Fuegian and Patagonia, Apache and Celt, Manx as well as those of forty or more of these states; and as result of that knowledge, I hold that what is entertainment for one juvenile is entertainment for another."

This is the child as cosmopolitan -- an unchanging figure across time and space.  And if children do not change then it goes to reason that children's book should not change, either. Keddie agreed with Finger's position on childhood reading and felt it coincided with the vision promoted by Journeys.  Both men believed a child reader did not need stories about airplanes, radios, or other modern fiddle faddle. Keddie wrote to ask Finger if he could share the article with the company's sales staff.  From there their correspondence grew until Keddie began to offer Finger jobs to do in support of the book set.

Reading these letters gives lots of insight into their goals for childhood read and some of the nitty-gritty of selling a children's home library.  Anyone who has read Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom knows here is much to be learned about the art and business of children's literature from reading an editor's letters. While I wouldn't claim the Finger-Keddie letters are as illuminating or entertaining as Nordstrom's, they are still pretty interesting. Both men were pretty passionate about children's literature and committed to the cause of helping children discover the value of literature.  It's worth noting neither Finger nor Keddie were born in the United States. Finger was originally from England and Keddie was a Scotsman.

I don't know if Finger's books for children are still worth reading. Without his Newberry win, he may have sunk into even deeper obscurity.  But during the 1920s and 30s,  he was very active in the realm of children's literature. He wrote and reviewed children's books, lectured to women's clubs and library groups, and through his work for Journeys was able to promote certain kinds of reading materials. He and Keddie give voice to certain beliefs about childhood reading that are worth understanding, in part, because I think they did not prevail.

A Brunswick Press Book: The Children's Book of Roads

Brunswick Press published three books for children by Leonard L. Knott and illustrated by Jacques Gagnier.  I managed to snag an inexpensive copy of The Children's Book of Roads. 

It was published in 1952.  Overall, it's pretty representative of children's book publishing in Canada at this time as Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman outline in Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children's Illustrated Books and Publishing (2010).  The content is nationalist and educational.It's dedicated to "boys and girls all across Canada who seek fun and adventures in reading their country's story."  The inside covers are an animated map of Canada with a strong black road connecting Newfoundland to British Columbia.

There is a fair amount of text divided into sections such as "The Wheel Comes to Canada," "The Trails of the Pioneers," and "The Road Builders."  As it happens, this book was "prepared with the editorial co-operation of the Canadian Good Roads Association."

The illustrations are all black and white line drawings with some background colour which was pretty typical of Canadian picture books at this time since it a cheaper.   Edwards and Saltman say illustrators "were encouraged to strive for accuracy and correctness of detail, rather than decorative effect" (55).  There seems fairly true of Gagnier illustrations.The center spread of The Caribou Trail is pretty striking.

The occasional drawings of kids are pretty stereoptyical 1950s wholesome, reminiscent of Dick and Jane and Spot. They are always watching the progress from a distance.

Brunswick Press also published Knott's  The Children's Guide to Canada's Capital in 1952 and The Children's Guide to Montreal in 1955, which was reprinted in 1967 in time for Expo 67.

Before joining forces with Brunswick Press, Knott wrote and published others books for children including:  A Children's Guide to Boston, A Children's Guide to Calgary, The Children's Book about Pulp and Paper, etc.  All his previous books were published by Editorial Associates, a Montreal PR firm between 1946-1950. That alone gives some insight into how sparse the world children's publishing was in Canada at this time. Knott appears to have worked in PR in Montreal for many years.

How Knott's last few books for children ended up being published by Brunswick Press is unknown. They have a somewhat similar look to the ones Editorial Associates published.

Looking at The Children's Book of Roads give insight into just how unique the Beaverdime Books were at this time.  It also adds to my impression that children's book publishing at Brunswick Press was somewhat random.

A Fun DIscovery

Look what I found yesterday (courtesy of a nice seller on Etsy.):

A little marketing experiment from Beaverdime Books.  Up till now, I've only seen the books as individual titles, so this is kind of fun. I guess Brunswick Press played with how it packaged and sold its books.

Beaverdime Books

What sparked my initial interest in Brunswick Press was the Beaverdime Book series. These little books were first published in 1953. Titles were added over the years.  Then they were reissued in 1965 and 1975.  Altogether, thirty different Beaverdime Books were produced.

These books are adorable.  They are small in size, soft, and have bright illustrations. They are drawn from classic children's literature, familiar stories, fairy tales, or poems by writers such as Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hans Christian Andersen and so on.

I have managed to collect a few titles from 1965. The Story of Augustus is one of my favourites.

I love this inside cover to Augustus. The illustrations are so vibrant and fun. 

In thinking about childhood reading, I find the book series a fascinating artifact, because it brings together so many elements: goals for childhood reading, an aesthetic designed to appeal to children, marketing decisions, etc. Some of my work has been into home libraries for children from the early decades of the 20th century such as Journeys through Bookland and My Book House. (I hope to write about those here some time.)  Those series are weighty and serious. The books are heavy and ornate. They are clearly intended as an investment.

The Beaverdime books, with their soft, small stature, 10 cent price tag, and gas station marketing take a different approach to getting kids to read. (Although a lot of the literature overlaps.)

Sue Fisher, the curator at the Eileen Wallace Children's Room at UNB is also interested in these books.  She has a great post on her blog outlining more details and history.  Since writing that, she's met and interviewed Karel Rohlicek, who along with his wife Milada Horejs, were responsible for the illustrations and design of the books.  Emigres from the then Czechoslovakia, they moved to Toronto before coming to Fredericton to work for University Press of NB

Initially, I assumed Beaverdime Books were modeled on The Little Golden Books that began publication in 1942 in the US. A similar philosophy at work, it seemed. But in reading about that book series, I learned they were based on European books from the 1930s: such as the Pere Castor books in France.  Karel credited the design for the Beaverdime books to books his father had made for a Prague bookseller. All in all, it seems the trend in children's books in 1930s Europe eventually spread to North America.

In July, I am presenting a paper on the Beaverdime Books at the Child, Youth, and Place in Atlantic Canadian Literaturere in Wolfville NS.  A lot of the discussion of Atlantic Canadian literature circulates around regionalism, but in the case of the Beaverdime Books, regionalism is not particularly relevant. Their agenda is more obviously nationalist, even cosmopolitan.  Sue Fisher believes they are completely unique in Canadian children's publishing at this time -- and I would agree.

Summer Research: The Children's Literature of Brunswick Press

Every summer I travel from Kansas City, MO to Saint John, New Brunswick (Canada) to visit my family.  But this summer,  I am going there to do some research as well.  Courtesy of its fellowship, I will spend time in the Eileen Wallace Children's Literature collection at the University of New Brunswick to learn more about the children's books published by University Press of New Brunswick.

University Press of New Brunswick aka Brunswick Press aka University Press was located in Fredericton, NB and was active for three decades, from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. The press primarily had a regional mandate: to promote the Maritimes through its monthly magazine The Atlantic Advocate and the original books it published. Overall, the press produced approximately sixty titles for children. These books span a wide variety of genres including stories, verses, folklore, history, and so on. Some of them promote the Atlantic region, but many of them do not. One of the questions I'm pondering is how the goals of regionalism conflict with the goals typically associated with children's literature and childhood reading. I also suspect some of the goals (of regionalism, of nationalism, of children's literature) change between the 1950s and 1970s.

The only history of Brunswick Press is an entry in the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, so there is much to learn. Besides spending time with the books, some of my research will include digging into archives -- reading the correspondence of the press's editor, Brigadier Michael Wardell.

Overall, I'm excited. I grew up in New Brunswick and so I'm interested in learning more about how this press might have contributed to shaping reading and literature for children in the province.

An Introduction

Welcome to The Child and The Book where I will write about my research into the history of childhood reading.

There is a child. There is a book.  Bring them together and... something powerful happens. Or so it is believed. Childhood reading is shaped, monitored, feared, prescribed, and imagined in a variety of ways (usually by adults - educators, parents, authors, publishers, librarians, etc.).  I'm interested in the ways it is shaped and why: the ideologies, hopes, fears, etc. that go into childhood reading.

I've been thinking about this topic for a while now (there is a dissertation somewhere with a similar title) but spurred on by a new research project this summer, I've decided to share some of what I've learned.  It will help me write, give me a place to share pretty pictures, and maybe (hopefully) eventually hear from other people who know or care about this topic, too.