Children's Books and Games:The State of the Art
Abstract
!!Chi Id ren's Books and bames Doreen Kronick Sarah Kronick THE STATE OF THE ART Because learning disabled children are more like than unlike "normal" children, the world of books and games is very important to them. For this reason, over the next months we will review various books and games and their appropriateness for the LD youngster. This first column presents an overview of children's literature through the ages. Books and games for children throughout history reflect our changing perceptions of children through the ages. The first books to appear in the Western world tended to be guarded by monks, written for adults, and read aloud to adults and children alike. The first books that children were allowed to own contained Bible stories, and then, somewhat later, the alphabet. In 1882 Field noted that children`s literature in the seventeenth century preached hell and damnation to save the "lost and ruined creatures that children were from an infinitely horrible eternal fate." Injunctions against sloth and idleness and stories of ogres, giants, and chimney sweeps were supposed to frighten children into goodness. Children's books from the mid 1900s to the early twentieth century reflected Puritan and then Victorian times