Ordinary Child Research Articles

범죄 전후 소년재범자의 삶에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study was to provide information on measures to reduce recidivism by examining the lives of juvenile offenders who had previously committed crimes. In order to achieve this, in-depth interviews were conducted with seven boys who had a history of punishment for recidivism, and a thematic analysis was carried out as a multi-case study. The analysis resulted in the identification of five themes: ‘ordinary child’, ‘immature boy’, ‘crime trigger’, ‘crime confinement’, and ‘limited future for boys’. Based on the findings of this study, several recommendations were made. Firstly, it was suggested that during the judicial process, experts should work with juvenile offenders to reconstruct their criminal cases in order to find ways to prevent reoffending even when exposed to the same environment, as proposed by the reintegrated numerical theory. Secondly, it was emphasized that customized case management should continue after the legal disposition has been completed, focusing on child welfare rather than the judicial system, in order to effectively prevent juvenile offenders from engaging in further criminal activities. Lastly, it was proposed that addressing the root causes of juvenile crime is essential for promoting social integration.

Is the Conners’ continuous performance test helpful for assessing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in a clinical setting?

Background Despite lacking validation for Norwegian populations, the Conners Continuous Performance Test II (CCPT-II) is applied to almost one-third of children receiving an ADHD diagnosis. However, evidence of the CCPT-II’s ability to differentiate between children with and without ADHD is contradictory. Thus, this study examines how CCPT-II results correlate with ADHD symptoms reported by mothers and teachers in a sample representing ordinary child and adolescent mental health services and explores the extent to which the CCPT-II influences the diagnostic result. Methods Correlations between CCPT-II results and ADHD Rating Scale scores and a clinical diagnosis of ADHD were analysed in children aged 6–15 years (N = 69) referred to a child and adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinic. Results Total ADHD symptom scores rated by mothers correlated with hit reaction time (HRT) block change (.260), HRT inter-stimulus interval (ISI) change (.264) and CCPT-II overall index (.263), while hyperactivity subscale scores correlated with omissions (.285), HRT (.414) and variability (.400). In teachers’ ratings, total ADHD and both subscale scores correlated with commissions (.280–.382), while hyperactivity scores correlated with variability (.265). A higher number of commissions was the only significant difference in CCPT-II performance between children diagnosed with and children without ADHD. Conclusions Correlations between CCPT-II results and ADHD symptoms were all small to moderate. As such, CCPT-II results should be interpreted with caution, because they correspond to a limited degree with other sources of information.

"Sometimes, You Are an Ordinary Child": Alternative Temporalities in Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly

"Sometimes, You Are an Ordinary Child": Alternative Temporalities in Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly

Family Partner: study protocol for a pilot randomised study of a home-visitation intervention in Norway.

Every year, about 5% of children in Norway experience severe child maltreatment and need support from the child welfare services. However, research-supported interventions for this group are lacking. The current study piloted an intensive home-visitation intervention, Family Partner, which aims to reduce child maltreatment among at-risk parents by improving parental skills, agency and trust in the welfare services, and children's well-being. The randomised controlled trial piloted in this study examines the acceptability of the Family Partner intervention for staff and families and evaluates its feasibility for a full-scale randomised controlled trial. This protocol outlines a prospective, parallel, pilot randomised trial of the Family Partner intervention in three Norwegian municipal child welfare services. The participants are families with children under 12 years of age, where the parents are identified as having challenges. Families in the treatment group receive the Family Partner intervention, while families in the control group receive ordinary child welfare services. Data are collected at baseline, and at 3, 6, 12 and 18 months after recruitment. The pilot study monitor retention and adherence to inform the feasibility of a future full-scale randomised study. To assess the acceptability of the trial and intervention, a subsample of the participating families, as well as the family partners and representatives of the child welfare services in each municipality, are invited to complete qualitative interviews. The results will guide the design of a fully powered randomised controlled trial of the Family Partner intervention compared with ordinary child welfare services. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04957394; Pilot Trial of Family Partner: a Child Maltreatment Prevention Intervention (FAMPART); registered on 12 July 2021.

마가복음의 어린아이 이야기의 주된 주제에 대한 고찰 — παιδίον의 의미와 마가복음 10:15의 문장구조 이해를 중심으로 —

This study interprets the two analogies of a child in Mark 9:33-37 and 10:13-16 in association with the events related to the disciples that occurred on the road in the second paragraph of the Gospel of Mark, and suggests that they contain the core lessons of the discipleship of Jesus. The key teachings are, as is expressed well in Jesus’ words and symbolic action in the first analogy of a child, that disciples are to serve not as the first but as the last, and that they are to welcome and receive small and insignificant beings like a little child. The second analogy of a child, in close connection with the first analogy, also emphasizes a new shift in how children are to be perceived, and how they should be welcomed and accepted. Existing studies have understood that these analogies are intended to correct adults’ negative perceptions of children in the ancient world. However, the current study argues that such understanding not only is inconsistent with the context of the passage, but also stems from a misunderstanding of the key word, παιδίον and the sentence structure of Mark 10:15. Considering its use throughout the Bible and other ancient literature, the word παιδίον in the analogy of a child is likely to refer to a child who lived as a servant rather than an ordinary child. Jesus put before his disciples the little child who was living as the last in the world, and spoke of his discipleship of serving as the servant of all people (Mark 9:35). He also demanded a new shift in the perception of the little child by identifying that child with himself (Mark 9:37). Likewise, the second child analogy reveals the meaning of Jesus’ teachings and symbolic actions more clearly when the children in the text are assumed to be in lowly and miserable situations. The problem with the disciples was not that they lacked a childlike innocent and dependable mind, but that they rejected and did not accept children, whose standings were the last in the world. Jesus’ words about the kingdom of God (Mark 10:14-15) are not intended to urge his disciples to become like children, but to emphasize that the kingdom of God belongs to the children they did not accept, and that no one can enter it without receiving these little ones.

Changes in Comprehensive Health Literacy Among First-Time Parents Attending Extended Home Visiting in Swedish Multicultural Settings: A Case-Comparison Study

IntroductionThis study aimed to gain knowledge about the impact of an extended postnatal home visiting program on parents’ comprehensive health literacy (CHL) in multicultural, socioeconomically disadvantaged Swedish settings. MethodThis quasi-experimental study adopted a case-control sampling method recruiting first-time parents through two Child Health Care Centers in Stockholm. Participants were interviewed twice through structured questionnaires when their child was aged between less than two months (n = 193) and 15–18 months (n = 151) from October 2017 to August 2020. Analyses used linear regression models and nonparametric tests. ResultsA subgroup of parents that needed language interpreters demonstrated statistically significantly improved CHL from premeasures to postmeasures within the intervention group that received an extended home visiting intervention (F = 11.429; p <.001), and when compared with a corresponding subgroup that received merely the ordinary Swedish Child Health Care Centers program (F = 5.025; p = .027). DiscussionPostnatal home visiting interventions may reduce inequity in CHL for parents living in multicultural, socioeconomically disadvantaged settings.

Prevention of Bullying of Students in Educational Institutions and the Application of Legal Sanctions

This is a qualitative research with a case study approach. This research is intended to answer the questions how the sanctions are applied by schools for bullying children and how the law enforcement for bullies is applied. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with 5 informants consisting of a psychologist, a legal practitioner and 3 parents whose children were victims of bullying. Cases of bullying that occur in schools receive less attention from teachers, academic staff and school principals. In general, bullying is still considered an ordinary child delinquency and behaviour, even though the impact of bullying is very dangerous for students who become victims. For this reason, every teacher, staff, principal must have sufficient knowledge regarding bullying issues in order to create an activity program that aims to prevent bullying and every parent must also pay attention to their children and understand that currently there is a law related to the problem of bullying and it is hoped that parents will have the courage to report to the authorities in order to provide a deterrent effect not only to the bullies but also to those who cover up the case.

Мониторинг показателей здоровья и физического развития мальчиков 7–12 лет, занимающихся спортивной гимнастикой

Abstract. We study the health and physical development indicators of gymnasts aged 7–12 years in the conditions of transition to the stage of sports specialization characterized primarily by the following changes in the content, types and amount of sports training: an increase in the share of special physical training relative to the previous stage; an increase in competitive time; the appearance of such types of training activities as training camps. Special attention is paid to the psychological and pedagogical aspect of sports training in the conditions of increasing the time of competitive activity. In addition, the issues of proportional development of the forms and functions of the body of young gymnasts within the framework of the health balance between the state of athletes and an ordinary child are considered. The data on the composition of body weight in children are presented to ensure the necessary prevention of the risk of diseases (including diseases of the cardiovascular system) in this life period. Determination of the compliance of the studied indicators with the health criteria of children of this age group on the following points: physical development; neuropsychic development (factors of individual psychological personality traits of students); resistance level; level of the functional state of the main systems of the child’s body.

Respiratory Symptoms in Post-infancy Children. A Dutch Pediatric Cohort Study

Aim: To study the pattern of respiratory symptoms in children in the general population.Method: We followed a cohort of children for up to 2 years through parents completing weekly online questionnaires in the Child-Is-Ill study (“Kind-en-Ziekmeting” in Dutch); the study was running 2012–2015. Inclusion criteria were “an ordinary child” (according to the parents) and <18 years old at inclusion. We especially encouraged participation of post-infancy children. Age at inclusion, sex, smoking exposure, allergy in the family, and frequent infections in the family were noted. Pearson's correlation, principal component analysis, latent class analysis, latent profile analysis, linear regression, and linear mixed effects regression were used in the statistical analyses.Results: Data were collected on 55,524 childweeks in 755 children (50% girls; median age, 7 years; interquartile range, 4–11 years, 97% ≥2 years at inclusion), with reported symptom(s) in 8,425 childweeks (15%), leading to school absenteeism in 25%, doctor's visits in 12%, and parental sick leave in 8%; symptoms lasting ≥3 weeks were rare (2% of episodes). Linear mixed effects regression showed significant, but only limited, effects of season on the proportion of “symptom(s) reported” per individual child. Only runny nose showed a significant, but very small, age effect. However, the variability between the children was considerable. There were no obvious subgroups of children with specific symptom combinations.Conclusion: In any randomly chosen week, the vast majority of children (85%) in our—mainly—post-infancy cohort derived from the general population did not have any symptom, even in the younger age group, even in winter. The children showed considerable variability; no clear subgroups of symptom patterns could be identified, underlining the difficult position of healthcare providers. These results support our opinion that post-infancy children in the general population should not be evaluated as if they are infants when they have recurrent respiratory symptoms. If they clearly deviate from the above-described most common pattern, it is wise to keep an eye on potential, maybe even rare, serious underlying causes.

РОЛЬ МУЗИКИ У ВСЕБІЧНОМУ РОЗВИТКУ ДІТЕЙ З ОСОБЛИВИМИ ОСВІТНІМИ ПОТРЕБАМИ

In the article the problems of music influence on disabled children are examined. The psychological (the connection of the main music elements with the principal human spheres) and the physiological (the physical music influence on human organs) aspects of music influence on an ordinary child are revealed. The music perception specificity of children with development abnormalities (physical, psychological and mental) is brought out; the peculiarities of music influence on them are contemplated. It is determined that the artistic development of the individual as part of his spiritual culture is a way of transmitting from generation to generation of universal values, in the perception and reproduction of which is the creative self-development of man. Art education is aimed at forming a culture of perception of the world around us, the development of individual abilities to their own transformation and the surrounding reality. We are convinced that art education, due to the specifics of art and the peculiarities of its perception, affects the development of the inner culture of the whole person. Education and culture are inseparable from each other. Art education is a long process and has no end. The growth of artistic culture of the individual determines the growth of cultural potential of society. The main ways of using of music while working with disabled children for therapeutic purposes have been brought forward. The introduction of non-standard, creative means to activate the internal resources of the body of a child with psychophysical disorders creates more chances for its development. That is, creativity is a powerful adaptive method, which with the help of one's own inner forces opens a new world of possibilities. In summary, it is safe to say that music significantly affects the development of all areas of the child (physical, mental and intellectual) and activates the movement, speech, thinking of the child; has the ability to therapeutically (healing, versatile, developing) to influence a child with special educational needs. Methods of music therapy give the opportunity to go beyond the ordinary, to overcome or forget for a while about the disease, to restore the ability to act in accordance with their dreams and preferences. There is a desire to constantly develop. The introduction of non-standard, creative means to activate the internal resources of the body of a child with psychophysical disorders creates more chances for its development. That is, creativity is a powerful adaptive method, which with the help of one's own inner forces opens a new world of possibilities.

How ordinary child language acquisition processes can lead to the unusual outcome of a mixed language

Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study is to examine the language processing mechanisms involved when young children bring structural innovations into their community way of speaking, as part of conventionalising code-switching practices to become a mixed language. Approach: The study takes a qualitative approach to the analysis of child language acquisition and adult speech data in two contexts. Data and Analysis: The study analyses naturalistic and spontaneous speech data of children and adults speaking the mixed language, Light Warlpiri, and adults older than that age group who do not speak the new mixed language. It compares an innovative auxiliary form in Light Warlpiri to child non-target speech in English with data taken from the Child Language Data Exchange System corpus. Findings: The findings are that the Light Warlpiri-speaking children used processes of re-analysis that are commonly found in child first language acquisition in other contexts to re-analyse elements of the verbal input, but because of the sociolinguistic context they created an innovative structure. Originality: The study is the first to directly compare processes of innovation in language contact with those of non-target structures in monolingual child language acquisition, identifying the same processes in each. It is also the first to show that a dramatic structural change from a linguistic perspective may be a small, incremental change from a child learner’s perspective. Significance/Implications: The significance of the study is that until now processes of innovation in language contact situations have been thought by many to differ in quality from those in monolingual child language acquisition contexts. This study shows that the child language acquisition processes are the same in each situation, but different sociolinguistic contexts lead to different outcomes for the communities’ ways of speaking. It also shows that children do not bring in new structure that is not motivated by their input; rather, they make small changes to the input they receive.

The effect of two types of minimal acupuncture on stooling, sleeping and feeding in infants with colic: secondary analysis of a multicentre RCT in Sweden (ACU-COL).

BackgroundEvidence for the effect of minimal acupuncture in infants with colic is limited.AimTo compare the effect of standardized minimal acupuncture, individualized acupuncture (where traditional acupuncture points were chosen according to the infant’s symptoms) and no acupuncture on objective measures of stooling, feeding and sleeping in infants with colic (based on diaries) and perceived changes in these parameters (based on parental questionnaires).MethodsThis was a secondary analysis of a multicentre randomized controlled three-armed trial conducted in four counties in Sweden between January 2013 and May 2015 (ACU-COL). The effect on crying has already been published and showed a decrease in crying time for the acupuncture groups. Infants, 2–8 weeks old, who cried and fussed for more than 3 h/day for more than 3 days/week, and thereby fulfilled the criteria for infantile colic, received four extra visits to their ordinary child health centre. The infants (n = 147) were randomly allocated via a computer-generated list to standardized minimal acupuncture at LI4 for 5 s (group A, n = 48), semi-standardized individual acupuncture with a maximum of five insertions for up to 30 s (group B, n = 49), or no acupuncture (group C, n = 48). The parents and the ordinary staff were blinded. Data were collected using: (1) diaries at baseline, during the two intervention weeks and 1-week follow-up; and (2) questionnaires with quantitative and qualitative components used at the second and fourth visits and during a follow-up telephone call. Outcomes were the changes in frequency of stooling and in hours of sleep per day.ResultsThere were no differences between groups for stooling, feeding, or sleeping at any time point according to data from the diaries. At the follow-up phone call, more parents in groups A and B (compared to group C) perceived that feeding and sleep had changed and that the symptoms of colic had improved.

Children’s conception of heroes, villains, the self, and others in China: A developmental study

ABSTRACTChildren learn about good and bad people from storybooks and cultural representations of heroes and villains. To probe their ideas about good and bad people, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, 8-year-olds in China proved able to conceptualize goodness and badness in a graded rather than a dichotomous fashion. They located heroes at the upper end of a vertical scale, villains at the lower end, and ordinary children in between. In Experiment 2, a wider age range of children evaluated five figures (a hero; a villain; the self; a best friend; and an ordinary child). Children again showed a non-dichotomous scaling. They positioned the hero at the upper end and the villain at the lower end. In the intervening space, children positioned a best friend above the self and the self above an ordinary child. With age, children’s differentiation between the self and an ordinary child decreased.

The investigation of environmental specifics of an autistic child’s family system

The paper is devoted to the actual nowadays problem of environmental specifics of an autistic child’s family system. The relevance of the chosen theme is grounded in the paper. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of of related to the problem fundamental theoretical concepts of Russian and translated authors. The paper also presents the outcomes of empirical research and displays statistically significant distinction between psychological indicators of the environment of autistic children’s families and those of families with ordinary children according to such parameters as: roles, rules, control, cooperation, discipline, acceptance/rejection, emotional bond. Considerable distinction between the type of family cohesion and the type of family adaptation of an autistic child’s family system in comparison to the family system of an ordinary child is described. Statistical reliability of correlation between an autistic child’s and an ordinary child’s family system and characteristics of the type of the family (dysfunctional, semifunctional, functional) is analyzed. The paper provides the analysis of distinction between the level of marriage satisfaction in autistic child’s families and in ordinary child’s families.

PERAN ORANG TUA PADA PAUD INKLUSI

This reserch aims to determine how the role of parents in early childhood inclusion. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach with case study. Course of a study conducted in Labschool House Citta with research subjects the role of parents Labschool House Citta. Methods of data collection using observation, wawacanra, and documentation. Data were analyzed using an interactive model of Miles and Huberman. Results from the study include: the role of parents guardians Labschool House Citta and parental benefits from the involvement of parents in school activities. The shape of the role of parents in Labschool House Citta, namely: (1) parenting; (2)parents accompany children in activities fied trip; (3) parents to volunteer in the market's activities; (4) speakers in regular discussion activities; (5) parent and child to make toys from waste project; (6) the parents a guest teacher in the classroom according to the theme; and (7) parents are involved in school committees called POM (association of parents). While the perceived benefits of interaction active parents in early childhood inclusion, among others: (1) parents can accompany and stimulate the development of the child; (2) parents will accept, acknowledge, give it a chance, and give appreciation to the achievement of an ordinary child and crew in particular; (3) parents to know the needs, interests and talents of the child; and (4) the parents respect children's rights.

Associations between toddlers' and parents' BMI, in relation to family socio-demography: a cross-sectional study.

BackgroundIt is well established that the pregnancy and the first years of life are important for future childhood health and body weight. Even though current evidence suggests that both parents are important for childhood health, the influence that parents’ BMI and socio-demography has on toddlers’ BMI has so far received little attention. This study aimed to increase our knowledge on the association between toddlers’ and parents’ BMI, in relation to family socio-demography. Further, the aim was to investigate the interaction between the mothers’ and fathers’ BMI in relation to their child’s BMI.MethodsA total of 697 children with a median age of 18 months (range 16-24 months) participated in the study along with their mothers (n = 697) and fathers (n = 674). As regards representability, our parental sample had a lower proportion of immigrants and the parents were more gainfully employed compared to parents in the rest of Sweden (when the child was 18 months old). The parents completed a questionnaire on parental and child health. Data on parental weight, height, and socio-demographics were recorded along with the child’s weight and height measured at an ordinary child health care visit. We used the thresholds for children’s BMI that were recommended for surveillance by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 2012 based on the WHO reference population.ResultsAmong the toddlers, 33 % had a BMI above the WHO 85th percentile and 14 % had a BMI above the WHO 95th percentile. The probability of a toddler having a BMI above the WHO 95th percentile was significantly increased if either the mother or father was overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2). Furthermore, we found a positive synergistic effect between the mother and father being overweight and their child having a BMI above the WHO 85th percentile. No associations were found between the toddlers’ BMI and the family’s socio-demographics, but there were associations between the parents’ BMI and the family’s socio-demographics.ConclusionHigh BMI is common even in toddlers in this population. The risk increases if one parent is overweight, and it increases even more if both parents are overweight. The results in this study confirm the importance of considering familial risk factors when examining child health and BMI at ordinary child health care visits already at an early age.

Working Children

There is a lacuna in the scholarship on child labor in Africa in general and the Cape Colony in particular between the abolition of slavery in the 1830s and the start of state regulation of childhood around the turn of the twentieth century. This is not for want of sources. Historians of the Cape colony have traditionally mined the criminal records to divine relations of production in the postemancipation countryside, which they have unsurprisingly characterized as marred by high levels of violence between settlers and black labor. There is a danger in the reliance on the criminal records of (mis)taking the exception for the rule or of doing history “backward.” The records generated by the implementation of the Masters and Servants Acts offer a much needed corrective to the criminal record, documenting as they do the everyday relations of production in the postemancipation colonial Cape countryside rather than the exceptional moments of breakdown. Read for their aggregate trends, they provide a rich and illuminating source on ordinary child employment practices and suggest the fashioning of postemancipation rural black childhood as manual labor. The surviving archives of two Great Karoo magistracies, Beaufort West and Colesberg, contain the indenture contracts of more than 550 children over the half century after 1856, two-thirds of whom were indentured by their own families and the other third by magistrates acting in loco parentis for either “destitute children” or “juvenile offenders.”

Between the “Abyss of Idealism” and the Hard Wall of “Reality”: Lessons of the Wordsworthian Child

The following article examines the myth of the Romantic Child, both as it originated in the Romantic period, specifically through the work of William Wordsworth, and as it continues to be promulgated, often uncritically, in popular culture and in the modern environmentalist movement. The idealization of the child, as I will suggest, represents a misconstruction of Wordsworth's poetry, in particular his “Immortality Ode,” which articulates a much more complicated and disquieting vision of childhood. That vision is supported by Wordsworth's personal commentaries on the poem, which foreground the liminality of the child's experiences and its place in society. A reexamination of the myth of the Romantic Child and the reasons for its cultural durability offers a means for literary scholars to articulate critical, pedagogical, and psychological counterpoints that make space for the “ordinary child.”

Great Expectations and the Ballad of the Road: Simple Annals of the Poor

Charles Dickens (1802-1870), the quintessential Victorian author has depicted various recurrent social evils of the 19 th century England. In Great Expectations particularly, he has shown how the poor orphan young boy Pip, deeply unhappy with his wretched domestic life, aspires for a better life and position in the society by any means. Though in a different way, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhay (1896- 1950), one of the luminaries of Bengali literature and an eminent early 20 th century writer, has also exhibited the struggle of the orphan young adolescent Apu picturing the domestic and social realities of the Bengali rural and urban society of the 1920s and 1930s in his well-known back to back novels The Ballad of the Road (Pather Panchali) and its sequel The Unvanquished (Aparajito). Both these novelists have simultaneously portrayed the outward impoverished life of common class people, and the layered sensitibity and human emotions in them, especially in the thoroughly growing ordinary child characters like Pip, Apu and others. They have also made poverty a character itself, a condition that represents the stark realities of life of the then English and Bengali societies respectively. But at the same time, they seem to be far different from each other in dealing with poverty and their attitudes to life and reality. Therefore, this comparative study aims to critically analyse these novels and explore how differently these authors have conveyed their ideology of 'realism'.

History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature (review)

Reviewed by: History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature M. Tyler Sasser (bio) History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature. By Jackie C. Horne. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Children’s fiction of the Enlightenment provided its young readers with exemplar characters. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, all fiction and history for children sought a moral purpose, explained in Sara Fielding’s The Governess (1749) as “the true Use of Books [being] to make you wiser and better.” These books provided flat characters whose clearly illustrated behaviors were to be either emulated or shunned by child readers; these sorts of characters were mostly a result of Romantic notions of childhood. This didacticism was the environment of children’s fiction before Alice arrived and ushered in the Golden Age of children’s literature precisely in 1865. Such, at least, is how critics and historians of early British children’s literature have tended to understand and explain their subject before Jackie C. Horne’s History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature. Originally hoping to identify how adventure novels published between 1800 and 1840 depict constructions of masculinity differently from their Victorian counterparts, Horne instead discovered that many of these early novels are experimenting with, rather than conforming to, conventions of gender, genre, and [End Page 237] character construction. This experimentation as it appears in adventure stories and historical fictions—as opposed to the more popular domestic story—drives her study. Horne begins with a question: “How did the ‘flat’ characters of eighteenth-century children’s literature become ‘round’ by the mid-nineteenth?” While previous studies have turned to Romanticism for an explanation, Horne finds a more convincing answer by situating adventure novels and fictionalized histories within the discipline of history. She is interested in the “Early-Victorian favorites,” texts that were published “after the rise of the moral tale but before the onset of mid-Victorian Golden Age fantasy” (21). But, as Horne explains, in order “to understand how children’s literature made the transition from idealized moral exemplar to sympathetically engaging characterization, it is vital to study the messy, conflicted texts that struggled to negotiate the often contradictory demands of the old exemplar character and the new, emotionally evocative one” (21). Critics have generally understood the shift away from exemplar characters toward realistic ones to be simultaneous with a shift away from didacticism; but Horne looks askance at such generalities, instead arguing that these early fictions depict the move from flat to realistic as being “entirely compatible with the goal of teaching children moral lessons” (24). Instead of discussing exemplarity and realism as a binary, then, she offers a more contiguous model that reveals the compelling ways in which the construction of both the “ideal” and “ordinary” child creates a bond between the reader and the protagonist that “foster[s] a desire for emulation” (24). Horne’s primary goal, however, is to articulate authors’ “means of achieving” such emulation (24). Each of Horne’s four chapters explores this “shift” from “exemplar to sympathetic identification in a different type of adventure story” (24). The first two chapters discuss children’s fiction set outside the domestic sphere—specifically, on deserted islands. These distant locations permit authors to experiment with the sort of gender and character construction that might otherwise threaten the realistic sphere. Interestingly, it is in these unrealistic settings that realistic characters begin to emerge. Chapter one, “The Emergence of the Ordinary: Parents and Children on the Deserted Isle,” traces the emergence of a new construction of childhood as it occurs in family robinsonade stories. Horne explores British robinsonades by Barbara Hofland and Ann Fraser Tytler within the context of Johann David Wyss’s The Family Robinson Crusoe (1814); she suggests that these texts use islands as the “ideal space for experimenting with a new construction of the child” that is not an idealized exemplar, but one combining good and bad qualities to render an “ordinary child” (25). In chapter two, “The Failure of the Ordinary: The Function of Death in the Family Robinsonade,” Horne turns to robinsonades by Frederick Marryat and...