SuitabookBalderdash!
Michelle Markel
- Reading
- Pause over the historical details and unfamiliar publishing terms, then look closely at how illustrations, typography and page design help convey an eighteenth-century bookshop and reading world.
- Themes
- Making reading enjoyable: Newbery responds to children’s books described as dreary and moralistic by publishing lively stories, fantasy, magazines and books designed for children. The book clearly presents enjoyable reading as valuable and treats Newbery’s approach approvingly.
- Innovation and enterprise: Newbery apprentices himself to the printing trade, opens a shop and develops publications intended to make reading more appealing to children. The book presents this favourably.
- Historical ideas about children: The book discusses earlier moralistic children’s writing and includes John Locke’s view that reading should be a treat, alongside a quotation about children’s development. This appears to provide historical context for changing ideas about children’s reading and upbringing, rather than presenting only a personal story.
- Worth knowing
- The historical setting includes eighteenth-century London and America, early child-rearing ideas, moralistic writing, and a quotation about making children strong, healthy, virtuous, wise and happy; these may merit contextual explanation.