Number Two
Applewood Miscellany
Raising Your Great-Grandparents
e have been privileged to bring our cameras into the American Antiquarian Society and capture their unique collection of American children’s books. In this Miscellany, we present pages from the collection that build a picture of what it may have been like to be a child, parent, or teacher in days gone by. The pages reveal a tougher world, where behavior meant the difference between life and death. In Old Pop Corn, an anthropomorphized ear of corn out for a walk is stripped of his kernels by bullying gangs of boys and girls. In Daddy Long Legs, a little girl is brought to the home of a misanthropic spider who strangles her and then feels perverse remorse that he has lost his only chance to have a friend. In today’s world of cartoon and literature these moments might be considered funny; in days gone by, one gets the feeling, these were not laughing matters, but ways of teaching children to mind their elders, avoid strangers, and stay safe from harm.
There are other themes that make the good old
days seem not so good and strangely far, far away: overt racism, sexism, cruelty to animals, authoritarianism. Fortunately, there are also themes that make us all wish we were transported back in time: charity, devotion, kindness, a sense of leisure, and a connection to the natural world. Books like Cruise of the Walnut Shell expose a gentle world in which children were free to experience the edges of their imagination unfettered by parental control. But then again, what one sees on From Bob’s School Days
the surface of the past is always only a reflection of our own time.
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