Shooting Bears, Saving Butterflies: Ideology of the Environment in Gibson's Herm and I (1894) and Klass's California Blue (1994)

Abstract

"What a society wants its children to know reveals what that society wants itself to be," writes historian Robert Hine (238), and seldom is it more evident what a society wants its children to know than in the literature written and published for that society's children. As a form of education and socialization, the literature written and published for children reveals a great deal about what adults wish children to know, to preserve, and to put into practice. In this way, children's literature provides a unique window into the pervasive values and deeply-held beliefs of a culture. "When I read books written for children," writes historian Anne MacLeod, "I look for authors' views, certainly, but I also try to discover what the culture is saying about itself, about the present and the future, and about the nature and purposes of childhood" (vii).