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Shortly after the end of the Civil War, the writer Samuel Osgood considered one question above all others: “What shall we do with our children?” More specifically, how should we “train and teach them in body and mind, by schools and books, by play and work, for that marvellous American life that is now opening to us its new and eventful chapter in the history of man?”
He had plenty of reason to wonder. Children’s literature was a burgeoning genre, and public libraries, which hadn’t existed in America until the 1850s, wouldn’t include children’s sections until four decades later. Fast-forward through time—and The Atlantic’s archives—and the question of what children should be reading has become a constant refrain. In 1900, the children’s author Everett T. Tomlinson observed that a “demand of the young reader is for action rather than for contemplation … Analysis and introspection are words outside his vocabulary.” In 1902, the librarian Hiller C. Wellman was convinced that a novel could irrevocably change a child’s morals: “If in a book—as sometimes happens—trickiness and deceit are exhibited as excusable or ‘smart,’ his ideal of honor is exposed to serious injury.”
Should kids be offered only fairy tales and fables? Can they handle Shakespeare? Would teenagers be more inclined to pick up the classics if their covers teased sex? How much horror can they take? And what’s the difference between education and entertainment anyway?
In 1888, the librarian C. M. Hewins argued that the last thing adults should do is oversimplify stories for children; they’ll “know nothing in later years of great originals” if they start out reading watered-down tales. Wellman, a decade-plus afterward, insisted that children’s books should impart on kids “the standards of right and wrong.” More than a century later, the Goosebumps author R. L. Stine would refute the notion that there should be any rules at all for kids’ literature. “Adults are allowed to read anything they want. Adults don’t have to have characters learn and grow. Adults can read all kinds of trash and no one criticizes them. Why do kids have to have that?” he told my colleague Adrienne LaFrance in 2018. “I thought it would be great to write a bunch of kids’ books where no one learns and no one grows.” The result, for Stine, has been a massively successful series of novels that has spawned a hit show and multiple film adaptations.
Popularity doesn’t indicate approval from children and adults alike, of course—even some of the most acclaimed titles have been subject to scrutiny, with the number of banned books ballooning year over year. When a Virginia school board added The Handmaid’s Tale to a list of titles to be removed, Margaret Atwood echoed Stine’s sentiments about the strict limitations set on kids. “Should parents have a say in what their kids are taught in public schools? Certainly: a democratic vote on the matter,” she wrote in 2023. “Should young people—high-school juniors and seniors, for starters—also have a say? Why not?”
In the meantime, kids are reading less. A 2020 study revealed that the number of children reading for fun had hit its lowest point since 1984, and reading skills are on the decline across America. Many factors could be behind this slump, including demographic shifts in schools, education-policy changes, and the rise of smartphones and screen time. But one of the most compelling explanations, according to the children’s author Katherine Marsh, “is rooted in how our education system teaches kids to relate to books.” She detailed one educator’s suggestion for third-grade English teachers following Common Core requirements: to first walk students through the difference between nonliteral and literal language, and then have them read a passage from Amelia Bedelia, the classic series in which the protagonist takes everything literally. Afterward, the students would answer written questions.
“The focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment,” Marsh explained. “Critical reading is an important skill … But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost.”
Perhaps, in order for children to fall back in love with reading, adults have to get out of the way—a conclusion Osgood reached himself, all the way back in 1865. He argued that understanding children requires taking them seriously, and that a developing mind isn’t necessarily a weak one. The best children’s books must present stories and images that “the young reader’s mind can easily appreciate and enjoy,” he wrote. But at the same time, why not also introduce children to the best writers “and their earth and heaven of earthly sense and starry wisdom”? Now there’s a question to ponder.
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