ABC for Father and Mother and Me. Representations of children as consumers in the picturebook of the interwar period

Abstract

This article examines how the child consumer is represented in a selection of branded picturebooks at the beginning of the 20th century. By analyzing children’s books published by a commercial chain of stores, the Cooperation Union, the article discusses how depictions of children as consumers are connected to the development of the emerging mass market and consumer society. The new ideas and marketing strategies expressed in these books also coincide with fundamental social changes in society, resulting from modernity and new technologies. Although the Cooperation books were designed for children and used familiar narrative techniques and motifs within children’s literature, I will argue that the books had a twofold audience. They were not only aimed at children but also at their parents. Representations of children as consumers in the studied material suggest that consumption is strongly connected to ideas of modernity and to representations of the modern child, but also that consumption is described as an inseparable part of the modern, urban experience