{"id":154973,"date":"2023-04-03T23:36:42","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T23:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/culture.org\/?p=154973"},"modified":"2023-04-03T23:36:42","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T23:36:42","slug":"from-locke-to-the-digital-age-the-evolution-and-global-impact-of-childrens-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culture.org\/art-and-culture\/from-locke-to-the-digital-age-the-evolution-and-global-impact-of-childrens-books\/","title":{"rendered":"From Locke to the Digital Age: The Evolution and Global Impact of Children&#8217;s Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">           <!--  <script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n                jQuery(document).ready(function() {\r\n                    jQuery(\".key-accordion-item .key-menu\").on(\"click\", function() {\r\n                        if (jQuery(this).parent().hasClass(\"active\")) {\r\n                            jQuery(this).next().slideUp();\r\n                            jQuery(this).parent().removeClass(\"active\");\r\n                        } else {\r\n                            jQuery(\".key-content\").slideUp();\r\n                            jQuery(\".key-accordion-item\").removeClass(\"active\");\r\n                            jQuery(this).parent().addClass(\"active\");\r\n                            jQuery(this).next().slideDown();\r\n                        }\r\n                    });\r\n                })\r\n            <\/script> -->\r\n\r\n\r\n            <!-- start html -->\r\n\r\n            <div class=\"news-key-takeaway-wapper\">\r\n                                <span style=\"background-color:#4db2ee;\">Key Takeaways<\/span>\r\n                <ul class=\"news-key-nbox\" style=\"border-color:#4db2ee;background-color:rgba(77, 178, 238, 0.1);\">\r\n                                                        <li>John Locke's book \"Some Thoughts Concerning Education\" laid the groundwork for modern-day children's literature and established norms of effective bookmaking for children.<\/li>\r\n                                                                    <li>Newbery established the first commercial market for children's books in the West, selling small, trim paperbacks to upwardly striving middle-class English parents.<\/li>\r\n                                                                    <li>The recognition of a critical link between literacy and economic and social advancement and of the illustrated children's book as a gateway to literacy and a better life became a pattern that repeated itself around the globe.<\/li>\r\n                                                                    <li>Picture books have come a long way since their early days as high-culture picture books for privileged children and have become a global phenomenon accessible to children from all backgrounds.<\/li>\r\n                                                                    <li>The digital revolution of the early 2000s spawned a new art form, the app, but picture books remained a cherished material object and an intimate encounter between an engaged caregiver and a child.<\/li>\r\n                                                <\/ul>\r\n            <\/div>\r\n            <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">John Locke&#8217;s revolutionary book, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, published in London in 1693, laid the groundwork for modern-day children&#8217;s literature.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A child psychologist before his time, Locke speculated on the types of books best suited to young people&#8217;s capabilities and interests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He noted that a child who feels scolded or lectured to is less apt to pay attention than one for whom learning is cast as a game.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Locke argued that a good children&#8217;s book is one in which &#8220;the Entertainment that [the child] finds might draw him on, and reward his Pains in Reading.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Locke listed brevity and the addition of illustrations as two other key elements of effective bookmaking for the young.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pictures, he said, were an essential ingredient because, from the child&#8217;s perspective, showing always works better than telling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Locke&#8217;s prestigious endorsement crystallized educated opinion and established the modern children&#8217;s book&#8217;s norms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>New Commercial Market for Children&#8217;s Books<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Locke&#8217;s treatise inspired entrepreneurial bookmen like London&#8217;s John Newbery to specialize in publishing juveniles in the mold of his forward-looking ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In doing so, Newbery established the first commercial market for children&#8217;s books in the West.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Newbery&#8217;s small, trim paperbacks sold briskly to the burgeoning ranks of upwardly striving middle-class English parents and were soon being imitated or pirated in North America.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>From London to Edo: The Global Recognition of Children&#8217;s Literature<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A clear pattern emerged that would repeat itself elsewhere around the globe many times over: the recognition of a critical link between literacy and economic and social advancement and of the illustrated children&#8217;s book as a gateway to literacy and a better life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Japan, a retail trade in akahon, or &#8220;red-bound&#8221; picture books for young readers, had sprung up independently of developments in Britain but for much the same reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n                        <!-- <div class=\"container-c\"> -->\r\n                        <!-- <div class=\"row justify-content-between\"> -->\r\n                        <!-- <div class=\"col-post-800\"> -->\r\n                        <!-- start html -->\r\n                        <div class=\"blockquote-wapper\">\r\n                            <div>\r\n                                <span class=\"text_quot\">\r\n                                    <p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 1970s saw nations such as Australia, Ghana, and Venezuela producing their own picture books, representing a momentous milestone in their national coming-of-age.<\/span><\/p>\n                                <\/span>\r\n\r\n                                <div class=\"quot_icon\">\r\n                                    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-content\/themes\/culture\/icons\/i_quot.svg\" type=\"image\/svg+xml\">\r\n                                <\/div>\r\n                            <\/div>\r\n\r\n                            <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"quot_tick\" src=\"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-content\/themes\/culture\/icons\/i_quot_tri.svg\" type=\"image\/svg+xml\">\r\n                        <\/div>\r\n                        <!-- end html -->\r\n                        <!-- <\/div> -->\r\n                        <!-- <\/div> -->\r\n                        <!-- <\/div> -->\r\n                                    \n<h2><strong>Twentieth-Century Children&#8217;s Book Publishing<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Publishers hired specialists of their own to meet the needs of the potentially vast new institutional market.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Immediately after the First World War, American publishing houses in New York and Boston became the first firms in the world to establish editorial departments dedicated solely to juvenile literature.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">European and, later, Asian publishers adopted aspects of the American model, but the zealous sense of purpose that propelled twentieth-century children&#8217;s book publishing forward took other forms as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution, the central government embraced children&#8217;s literature as an essential tool of nation-building and sponsored the publication of illustrated books for the young designed to engage their interest in the collective dream of the new Soviet society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Expansive Possibilities of Picture Books<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The clash of values represented by Lucy Sprague Mitchell&#8217;s and the librarians&#8217; opposing visions resulted in years of bitter feuding and acrimonious debate and, when cooler heads finally prevailed, in a significant expansion of the picture book&#8217;s expressive possibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Late Victorian illustrators Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, and Randolph Caldecott were deeply influenced by the arrival of Japanese ukiyo-e prints in the West.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Created by artists such as Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others, these prints introduced novel techniques. They demonstrated how to simplify an image, balance a composition, and effectively utilize white space.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Additionally, they showcased the seamless integration of decorative elements within a scene. Picture books have come a long way since their early days as high-culture picture books for privileged children.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As more affordable books emerged, such as the launch of Little Golden Books in 1942, picture books became available to families of all means.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The establishment of the International Youth Library in Munich in 1949 and the International Board on Books for Young People in 1953 brought the world\u2019s children\u2019s literature to a central repository, promoting cross-cultural awareness through books.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1964, the Bologna Children\u2019s Book Fair facilitated the commercial flow of children\u2019s books across national and cultural borders, with publishers from England, France, Italy, the United States, and Japan forming the core participants.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The influence of American picture books also made its way to Japan and inspired postwar Japanese writers and illustrators, setting in motion a chain of influence that eventually reached Taiwan, South Korea, and China by the turn of the new century.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 1970s saw nations such as Australia, Ghana, and Venezuela producing their own picture books, representing a momentous milestone in their national coming-of-age.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By 2015, Chinese publishers had acquired rights to over two thousand Western children\u2019s books, including all major American award winners.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As China&#8217;s middle class expanded, access to Western-style picture books became a priority.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Private Chinese publishing companies began to strengthen their ties to the Western children\u2019s book market, despite the Chinese government&#8217;s attempts to limit the scope of Western cultural influence on its children.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The digital revolution of the early 2000s spawned a new art form: the app. However, it did not render the traditionally printed picture book obsolete.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The audience for picture books was becoming more fluid, with experimental zine and web-based comics artists bringing formal comics elements and a hipster maverick sensibility to the genre.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In conclusion, the evolution of picture books has been a fascinating journey, from their origins as high-culture picture books for privileged children to a global phenomenon accessible to children from all backgrounds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Picture books have endured through changing times and technologies, remaining a cherished material object and an intimate encounter between an engaged caregiver and a child.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":154974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-and-culture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culture.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}