Beholding American Children: A British Perspective

Abstract

Gillian Avery's Behold tL· Child gives general readers an absorbing narrative of three hundred years of children's books in America. The focus of her story is the divergence between British and American children's books from a common beginning, a divergence that she attributes persuasively to differences between British and American childhoods. In America a morality that insists on work as the highest good leads to books in which salvation takes the form of economic success and are expected to have responsibilities and freedom of action. British children—of the book-buying classes—experience instead a prolonged and sheltered childhood with little realworld freedom or responsibility. For nonspecialist British readers, the book undoubtedly provides much new information. For American readers, its primary virtue is that it gives us the opportunity to see ourselves from without, an opportunity that is especially valuable for those familiar only with American children's books. Avery herself acknowledges that the first half of these three hundred years cannot illustrate her thesis, because during this period nearly all the books read by American were written in England. The lengthy chapter on the seventeenth century is designed to establish the pattern of American children's lives. Understandably the least original chapter in the book, it covers much territory familiar to anyone knowledgeable about early American history or the history of English children's books. It also illustrates a general problem: Avery's generalizations about American are based principally on information about those of New England (the best documented region). On the other hand, her portrayal of the children of godly ancestors preparing for eternity from earliest infancy is an apt and ironic preparation for the theme of secular salvation