Examine the Past to Empower the Future with Archival Chapbooks

Teacher candidates enter a climate of increasing scrutiny over the content and purpose of children’s literature in educational settings. We will share our experience using archival chapbooks from the 19th and early 20th centuries to introduce elementary education majors to the diverse ways in which children’s literature has been used to advance various beliefs and views of childhood. These beliefs include moralizing content, rigid social and gender expectations, and racial hierarchies. Teacher candidates have the best interest of children at heart but often misunderstand how literature functions in context and how conceptions of childhood have changed and evolved over time. Learn how, through collaborative partnership between course instructors and librarians, you can help educators reflect on and critique their conceptions of both reading and childhood as they select and integrate literature in their teaching.