Cub Reporters: American Children's Literature and Journalism in the Golden Age by Paige Gray (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cub Reporters: American Children's Literature and Journalism in the Golden Age by Paige Gray George Bodmer (bio) Cub Reporters: American Children's Literature and Journalism in the Golden Age, by Paige Gray. State U of New York P, 2019. Paige Gray's Cub Reporters makes the comparison between American children's literature and journalism beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, both in defining childhood and America's growing place and prestige in the world. It is Gray's thesis that these two genres fed on one another to create realities and new models for viewing the world through artifice. This discussion falls at a particularly appropriate period in our history—her second chapter is titled "Making News and Faking Truth: Richard Harding Davis the Reporter, and the American Youth." Each chapter focuses on an exchange between journalism and children's literature: Horatio Alger, Jr., on newsboys; Richard Harding Davis, as a newspaperman who turns to writing fiction for the young; L. Frank Baum's series Aunt Jane's Nieces (1906), which deals with female journalists; the Chicago Defender Junior, which published poetry and submissions by African American children; and, finally, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (1992). It is especially appropriate to begin with Alger, who had a close relationship with the newsboys of New York City, in life and as subject matter for his rags-to-riches stories. Gray here makes the claim that as newsboys on the street made loud and exaggerated claims to sell their papers, they represented "journalists" at the lowest rung (and certainly we see a comparable focus on that lowest rung, the worst paid, on which industries depend, as we emerge from pandemic times). Significant to the writer's thesis here is the focus on "those young people who inspired and were inspired by the Golden Age of American children's literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The years between the Civil War and World War I also approximate a 'golden age' of the newspaper" (xv). One frequently hears "golden age" used to refer to these times, but a greater justification of this term is needed. For example, the author cites the success of Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Frances Hodgson Burnett, E. Nesbit, Beatrix Potter, Louisa May Alcott, and A. A. Milne (xviii); few of these authors are American. Certainly, works for children during these times enjoyed greater success and allowed greater leeway in what could be presented (as likewise occurred post-World War II in American picture books), but a more precise definition is needed to [End Page 196] apply this to American literature for the young; likewise, the case must be made more clearly that this was a transitional stage for American journalism. This slight volume—there are approximately 125 pages of text—in five chapters, discusses five cases describing young characters who are actively redefining their world. The first, Alger, and his series of rags-to-riches stories are especially appropriate here because Alger portrays young people largely on their own, as bootblacks, messenger boys, and newsboys of the streets, the last helping to make the crossover to the journalism theme. The author next discusses Davis, who published Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), portraying a newspaper office boy who steadfastly tries to make sense of his world. Much is made of Davis's leap from journalist to novelist, but it's not uncommon for newspapermen to turn to fiction (e.g., Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, and Robert Cormier). The following typifies the thesis here: "Through his 'cub reporter'-type characters, Davis invites young readers to participate in the process of artifice, one that includes empirical investigation as well as innovative storytelling. Both undermining and commending American journalism, Davis's characters show the artifice of the newspaper, and in doing so, show youth's ability to unsettle and reconfigure the news literally and figuratively" (18). It is an inevitable part of narrative to shape events into story, whether for a newspaper, a novel, a movie, a drama; it is why we write and why we read. Gray's third chapter concerns Baum—not The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but the...