Learning From The Left: Children's Literature, The Cold War, And Radical Politics In The United States
by Julia L. Mickenberg /
2005 / English / PDF
4.2 MB Download
At the height of the Cold War, dozens of radical and progressive
writers, illustrators, editors, librarians, booksellers, and
teachers cooperated to create and disseminate children's books that
challenged the status quo. Learning from the Left provides the
first historic overview of their work. Spanning from the 1920s,
when both children's book publishing and American Communism were
becoming significant on the American scene, to the late 1960s, when
youth who had been raised on many of the books in this study
unequivocally rejected the values of the Cold War,
At the height of the Cold War, dozens of radical and progressive
writers, illustrators, editors, librarians, booksellers, and
teachers cooperated to create and disseminate children's books that
challenged the status quo. Learning from the Left provides the
first historic overview of their work. Spanning from the 1920s,
when both children's book publishing and American Communism were
becoming significant on the American scene, to the late 1960s, when
youth who had been raised on many of the books in this study
unequivocally rejected the values of the Cold War,Learning
from the Left
Learning
from the Left shows how "radical" values and ideas that have
now become mainstream (including cooperation, interracial
friendship, critical thinking, the dignity of labor, feminism, and
the history of marginalized people), were communicated to children
in repressive times. A range of popular and critically acclaimed
children's books, many by former teachers and others who had been
blacklisted because of their political beliefs, made commonplace
the ideas that McCarthyism tended to call "subversive." These
books, about history, science, and contemporary social
conditions-as well as imaginative works, science fiction, and
popular girls' mystery series-were readily available to children:
most could be found in public and school libraries, and some could
even be purchased in classrooms through book clubs that catered to
educational audiences. Drawing upon extensive interviews, archival
research, and hundreds of children's books published from the 1920s
through the 1970s,
shows how "radical" values and ideas that have
now become mainstream (including cooperation, interracial
friendship, critical thinking, the dignity of labor, feminism, and
the history of marginalized people), were communicated to children
in repressive times. A range of popular and critically acclaimed
children's books, many by former teachers and others who had been
blacklisted because of their political beliefs, made commonplace
the ideas that McCarthyism tended to call "subversive." These
books, about history, science, and contemporary social
conditions-as well as imaginative works, science fiction, and
popular girls' mystery series-were readily available to children:
most could be found in public and school libraries, and some could
even be purchased in classrooms through book clubs that catered to
educational audiences. Drawing upon extensive interviews, archival
research, and hundreds of children's books published from the 1920s
through the 1970s,Learning from the Left
Learning from the Left offers a history
of the children's book in light of the history of the history of
the Left, and a new perspective on the links between the Old Left
of the 1930s and the New Left of the 1960s.
offers a history
of the children's book in light of the history of the history of
the Left, and a new perspective on the links between the Old Left
of the 1930s and the New Left of the 1960s.
Winner of the Grace Abbott Book Prize of the Society for the
History of Children and Youth
Winner of the Grace Abbott Book Prize of the Society for the
History of Children and Youth