KIDS‘ LIT
1917
What were students reading?
By Catherine Quanstrom, Smithers teacher
IN THE nickel-mining town of Thompson, Manitoba, in the early 1960s, my winters were punctuated by the monthly arrival of a fat, brown parcel from the provincial outreach library in Winnipeg. Out would come the scissors and, with my mother cautioning me to “be careful and watch the dust jackets,” I’d snip open the package to reveal the trove of books we had chosen a few weeks earlier from the library’s mail-order catalogue. The stories of Thornton W. Burgess were my early favorites, particularly Old Mother West Wind with its tales of Reddy Fox, Jimmy Skunk, and all the other inhabitants of the Green Forest.
A senior third reader class at Tolmie School, 1916. Image used courtesty of Saanich Archives; accession number 2013-009-005.
47 languages, the novels feature animal protagonists navigating harsh and puzzling Interestingly, many of the stories I enjoyed mileux within the world of men. In addition 50 years ago had already been around for to London’s beautifully detailed and five decades or more. A list compiled by BCTF descriptive prose, the perennial appeal of librarian Emily O’Neill shows that in 1917 these narratives, and their popularity in 1917, children were enjoying many titles that would may lie in the way children and youth are later prove to be classics, including Anne of more able than adults to identify with the Green Gables and the other splendid “Anne” canine heroes and their struggles against books by L.M. Montgomery. L. Frank Baum’s overwhelming odds. tales of Oz were a favourite too. As a secondary school English teacher, I The Call of the Wild and White Fang, tales know that many teens prefer stories with by Jack London that were set during the an element of overt challenge and struggle. Klondike Gold Rush, weren’t necessarily Most of today’s youth will have encountered written for a youth Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book either audience. Initially through Disney’s 1967 animation, or by serialized in popular the 2016 live action/CGI production. In magazines such 1917, however, Kipling had a considerable as the Saturday readership for his tales set in the jungles of Evening Post and colonial India. Then as now, young readers later published in would have related to a protagonist having to negotiate the rules of an alien environment, much as they found themselves trying to understand the protocols of the adult world.
Sources: Bobbsey Twins in a Great City: 1917; public domain. The Call of the Wild: 1903; public domain.
6 TEACHER Jan | Feb 2017
A span of over 100 years offers many opportunities for adaptations and critiques of the imperialist assumptions of the era. The Jungle Book has inspired several films, a play, audiobook versions, comic books, and manga. Author Neil Gaiman put his own spin on the story in The Graveyard Book; rather than being raised by jungle creatures, an orphaned
Children were enjoying many titles that would later prove to be classics. baby is raised by the dead residents of a cemetery. Some titles popular in 1917 have melted into obscurity. Lucy Fitch Perkins’s “Twins” series (The Dutch Twins, The Japanese Twins, The Irish Twins, and so on) were written for very young children, and offer glimpses of life in various countries 100 years ago. Unfortunately, the books also contain antiquated views of gender roles, even though the author herself wrote and illustrated in order to support her family following a financial setback. The Bobbsey Twins series, about two sets of sleuthing boy-girl twins and their friends, has also disappeared from popular reading lists. I’m in favour of that deletion, since even I, an uncritical and omnivorous young reader in the 1960s, found the stories clogged with implausible plots and syrupy dialogue. In thinking about the changes the world has seen since 1917, I’m heartened that many stories popular then still have currency today. I think it’s time to peruse the list and reread some old favorites. After all, a good story is a good story. Romeo and Juliet, anyone?