United States.

Overview.

Compared with England, the United States has fewer peaks. In Huckleberry Finn, of course, it possesses a world masterpiece matched in the children's literature of no other country. Little Women, revolutionary in its day, radiates a century later a special warmth and may still be the most beloved "family story" ever written. Though The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been recklessly compared with Alice, it lacks Carroll's brilliance, subtlety, and humour. Nonetheless, its story and characters apparently carry, like Pinocchio, an enduring, near-universal appeal for children. To these older titles might be added Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952), by E.B. White, two completely original works that appear to have become classics. To this brief list of high points few can be added, though, on the level just below the top, the United States bears comparison with England and therefore any other country.

The "law" of belated development applies in a special way. From Jamestown to the end of the Civil War, American children's literature virtually depended on currents in England. In the adult field Cooper and Washington Irving may stand for a true declaration of independence. But it was not until the 1860s and '70s, with Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Lucretia Hale's Peterkin Papers, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, and St. Nicholas magazine, that children's literature finally severed its attachment to the mother country. In the marketplace, however, a uniquely American note was sounded much earlier, the first of the Peter Parley series of Samuel Goodrich having appeared in 1827.

In certain important fields, the United States pioneered. These include everyday-life books for younger readers; the non-class-based small-town story such as The Moffats by Eleanor Estes; the Americanized fairy tale and folktale such as Uncle Remus (1880), not originally meant for children, and Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories (1922); beginners' books such as Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat (1957); and the "new realism." One might maintain that American children's literature, particularly that since World War II, is bolder, more experimental, more willing to try and fail, than England's. Moreover, it set new standards of institutionalization, "packaging," merchandising, and publicity, as well as mere production, especially of fact books and "subject series."