Illustration in American Children’s Literature

This course traces the history of illustrated books for children from early colonial America to the present, inviting students to explore intersections between a text's visual elements and its didactic aims. Beginning with the New England Primer, we work chronologically through a range of pamphlets, chapbooks, dime novels, comic books, fairy tales, toy books, and early readers in order to develop an understanding of the history and evolution of one of literature's most beloved and familiar forms. What is the relationship between illustration and literacy education? How do images affect the way books are bought and sold? What kinds of reading do illustrations invite children and their caregivers to perform? What do works published by Isaiah Thomas (an eighteenth-century publisher who popularized children's literature in New England) have in common with stories by Margaret Wise Brown, Ezra Jack Keats, and Christian Robinson? How do the first books we encounter shape us and what can they help us understand about the culture at large? We explore these and other questions throughout our time together, as we map the relationship between today's market for children's books and the rich and contested history of the form.