title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov was born in the settlement of Verkhnyeye, Bakhmut uyezd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now part of Lysychansk city in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine), into a railway worker's family of Russian ethnicity. According to the Soviet Major General Petro Grigorenko, Voroshilov himself alluded to the heritage of his birth-country and to the previous family name of "Voroshilo". During his school years, Voroshilov became a close friend and almost a member of the family of Semyon Ryzhkov, who later became the second secretary of the First Duma.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Voroshilov became a member of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars and Commissar for Internal Affairs along with Vasiliy Averin. He was well known for aiding Joseph Stalin in the Revolutionary Military Council, having become closely associated with Stalin during the Red Army's 1918 defense of Tsaritsyn, and one of the Cavalry Army clique.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov was active as a commander of the Southern Front during the Russian Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War while with the 1st Cavalry Army. As Political Commissar serving co-equally with Stalin, Voroshilov was responsible for the morale of the 1st Cavalry Army, which was composed chiefly of peasants from southern Russia.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov served as a member of the Central Committee from his election in 1921 until 1961. In 1925, after the death of Mikhail Frunze, Voroshilov was appointed People's Commissar for Military and Navy Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, a post he held until 1934. His main accomplishment in this period was to move key Soviet war industries east of the Urals, so that the Soviet Union could strategically retreat, while keeping its manufacturing capability intact. Frunze's political position adhered to that of the Troika (Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Stalin), but Stalin preferred to have a close, personal ally in charge (as opposed to Frunze, a "Zinovievite"). Frunze was urged by a group of Stalin's hand-picked doctors to have surgery to treat an old stomach ulcer, despite previous doctors' recommendations to avoid surgery and Frunze's own unwillingness. He died on the operating table of a massive overdose of chloroform, an anaesthetic. Voroshilov became a full member of the newly formed Politburo in 1926, remaining a member until 1960.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov was appointed People's Commissar (Minister) for Defence in 1934 and a Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. He played a central role in Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s, denouncing many of his own military colleagues and subordinates when asked to do so by Stalin. He wrote personal letters to exiled former Soviet officers and diplomats such as commissar Mikhail Ostrovsky, asking them to return voluntarily to the Soviet Union and falsely reassuring them that they would not face retribution from authorities. Voroshilov personally signed 185 documented execution lists, fourth among the Soviet leadership after Molotov, Stalin and Kaganovich. Voroshilov did not personally share the paranoia towards upper-class elements of the officer corps. He openly declared that the saboteurs in the Red Army were few in number and tried to save the lives of officers like Lukin, who would serve with distinction during the Second World War, and Sokolov-Strakhov, and he was sometimes successful. He had no problem denouncing officers he disliked such as Tukhachevsky.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Despite taking part in the purging of many "mechanisers" (supporters of wide usage of tanks rather than cavalry) from the Red Army, Voroshilov became convinced that reliance on cavalry should be decreased while more modern arms should receive higher priority. Marshal Budyonny tried to recruit him to his cause of protecting the status of cavalry in the Red Army but Voroshilov openly declared his intention to do the opposite. He praised the army's combined arms warfare capabilities as well as the high quality and ability to take initiative of the officers during the 1936 summer manoeuvers. However he also pointed out issues in the Red Army as a whole in his full report. Among the issues he pointed out were insufficient communication, ineffective staffs, insufficient cooperation between arms, and the rudimentary nature of the command structure in tank units and other modern arms.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: When the Great Purge ended, some reforms were undertaken by the high command to reconcile Red Army doctrine (for example deep operations doctrine) with the real state of the Red Army. The politically appointed commanders of the post-purge Red Army saw that the army, especially after the purge, was not suitable to carry out deep operations style warfare. Commanders such as Voroshilov and Kulik were among the instigators of these reforms which positively impacted the Red Army. These commanders themselves turned out not to be able to carry out such operations in practice. Voroshilov and Kulik turned out to be unable to put these reforms into practice. One of these reforms was a reorganization of Red Army field units which accidentally moved Red Army organization to a far less advanced state than it had been in 1936. This reorganization was conceived by Kulik but put into practice by Voroshilov.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: When territorial units were abolished Voroshilov noted that among the reasons for disbanding them was inability to train conscripts in the use of modern technology. He had openly proclaimed that the system was inadequate in an era in which imperialist powers (such as Germany) were expanding the capabilities of their armies. The territorial units had been very unpopular, not only with Voroshilov, but with the Red Army leadership a whole. They were hopelessly ineffective: territorial conscript Alexey Grigorovich Maslov noted that he never fired a shot during his training, while it was noted that these units only underwent real training in the one month a year when experienced veterans returned.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov commanded Soviet troops during the Winter War from November 1939 to January 1940 but, due to poor Soviet planning and Voroshilov's incompetence as a general, the Red Army suffered about 320,000 casualties compared to 70,000 Finnish casualties. When the leadership gathered at Stalin's dacha at Kuntsevo, Stalin shouted at Voroshilov for the losses; Voroshilov replied in kind, blaming the failure on Stalin for eliminating the Red Army's best generals in his purges. Voroshilov followed this retort by smashing a platter of roast suckling pig on the table. Nikita Khrushchev said it was the only time he ever witnessed such an outburst. Voroshilov was nonetheless made the scapegoat for the initial failures in Finland. He was later replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko. Voroshilov was then made Deputy Premier responsible for cultural matters.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov initially argued that thousands of Polish army officers captured in September 1939 should be released, but he later signed the order for their execution in the Katyn massacre of 1940.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Voroshilov became commander of the short-lived Northwestern Direction (July to August 1941), controlling several fronts. In September 1941 he commanded the Leningrad Front. Working alongside military commander Andrei Zhdanov as German advances threatened to cut off Leningrad, he displayed considerable personal bravery in defiance of heavy shelling at Ivanovskoye; at one point he rallied retreating troops and personally led a counter-attack against German tanks armed only with a pistol. However, the style of counterattack he launched had long since been abandoned by strategists and drew mostly contempt from his military colleagues; he failed to prevent the Germans from surrounding Leningrad and he was dismissed from his post and replaced by Georgy Zhukov on 8 September 1941. Stalin had a political need for popular wartime leaders, however, and Voroshilov remained as an important figurehead.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Between 1945 and 1947, Voroshilov supervised the establishment of the socialist republic in postwar Hungary. He attributed the poor showing of the Hungarian Communist Party in the October 1945 Budapest municipal elections to the number of minorities in leadership positions, arguing that it was "detrimental to the party that its leaders are not of Hungarian origin".


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: In 1952, Voroshilov was appointed a member of the Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Stalin's death on 5 March 1953 prompted major changes in the Soviet leadership. On 15 March 1953, Voroshilov was approved as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e., the head of state) with Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Communist Party and Georgy Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. Voroshilov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev brought about the 26 June 1953 arrest of Lavrenty Beria after Stalin's death.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: One of Voroshilov's responsibilities as chairman of the Presidium was to oversee the appeal review of Soviet death row inmates. Analysis by Jeffrey S. Hardy and Yana Skorobogatov describe his role thus:


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: "Chairman Voroshilov presided over the meetings and clearly had the most influential voice, but split votes were not uncommon and Voroshilov was sometimes outvoted... Throughout his tenure as Presidium chair, he behaved like someone who believed that one should follow established procedure and not act too quickly in matters of life and death."


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Hardy and Skorobogatov indicate that Voroshilov frequently exerted his influence on the committee toward leniency, especially in the case of those who expressed repentance in their appeal documents and those convicted of crimes of passion or under the influence of alcohol; he judged those convicted of political crimes or acts with financial motives more harshly. During his tenure, many individuals sentenced to death had their punishments commuted to prison terms of varying lengths. The authors of the study observe that his successor, Brezhnev, took a noticeably harder line in appeals cases.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: However, the contrast between Voroshilov's relatively magnanimous attitude toward pardon cases in the 1950s with his well-documented participation in the deadly purges of the 1930s (as described above) was noted even at the time by Khrushchev, who asked him, "So when were you acting according to your conscience, then or now?"


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: After Khrushchev removed most of the Stalinists like Molotov and Malenkov from the party, Voroshilov's career began to fade. On 7 May 1960, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union granted Voroshilov's request for retirement and elected Leonid Brezhnev chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council (the head of state). The Central Committee also relieved him of duties as a member of the Party Presidium (as the Politburo had been called since 1952) on 16 July 1960. In October 1961, his political defeat was complete at the 22nd party congress when he was excluded from election to the Central Committee.Following Khrushchev's fall from power, Soviet leader Brezhnev brought Voroshilov out of retirement into a figurehead political post. Voroshilov was again re-elected to the Central Committee in 1966. Voroshilov was awarded a second medal of Hero of the Soviet Union 1968.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: During a winter night in 1969. Voroshilov started to feel unwell. His family proposed to call an ambulance immediately, but he adamantly refused. In the morning he put on his military uniform, and after calling a car, he went to the hospital himself, fully decorated. Voroshilov died on 2 December, at the age of 88, and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, in one of the twelve individual tombs located between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: Voroshilov was married to Ekaterina Voroshilova, born Golda Gorbman, a Ukrainian Jew from Mardarovka. She changed her name when she converted to Orthodox Christianity in order to be allowed to marry Voroshilov. They met while both exiled in Arkhangelsk, where Ekaterina was sent in 1906. While both serving on the Tsaritsyn Front in 1918, where Ekaterina was helping orphans, they adopted a four-year-old orphan boy who they named Petya. They also adopted the children of Mikhail Frunze following his death in 1925. During Stalin's rule, they lived in the Kremlin at the Horse Guards.


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: His personality as it was described by Molotov in 1974: "Voroshilov was nice, but only in certain times. He always stood for the political line of the party, because he was from a working class, a common man, very good orator. He was clean, yes. And he was personally devoted to Stalin. But his devotion was not very strong. However in this period he advocated Stalin very actively, supported him in everything, though not entirely sure in everything. It also affected their relationship. This is a very complex issue. This must be taken into account to understand why Stalin treated him critically and not invited him at all our conversations. At least at private ones. But he came by himself. Stalin frowned. Under Khrushchev, Voroshilov behaved badly."


title: Kliment Voroshilov

text: The Kliment Voroshilov (KV) series of tanks, used in World War II, was named after him. Two towns were also named after him: Voroshilovgrad in Ukraine (now changed back to the historical Luhansk) and Voroshilov in the Soviet Far East (now renamed Ussuriysk after the Ussuri river), as well as the General Staff Academy in Moscow. Stavropol was called Voroshilovsk from 1935 to 1943.


title: German spring offensive

text: The German spring offensive, or Kaiserschlacht ("Kaiser's Battle"), also known as the Ludendorff offensive, was a series of German attacks along the Western Front during the First World War, beginning on 21 March 1918. Following American entry into the war in April 1917, the Germans had realised that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the United States could ship soldiers across the Atlantic and fully deploy its resources. The German Army had gained a temporary advantage in numbers as nearly 50 divisions had been freed by the Russian defeat and withdrawal from the war with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.


title: German spring offensive

text: There were four German offensives, codenamed "Michael", "Georgette", "Gneisenau", and "Blücher-Yorck". "Michael" was the main attack, which was intended to break through the Allied lines, outflank the British forces (which held the front from the Somme River to the English Channel) and defeat the British Army. Once that was achieved, it was hoped that the French would seek armistice terms. The other offensives were subsidiary to "Michael" and were designed to divert Allied forces from the main offensive effort on the Somme. No clear objective was established before the start of the offensives and once the operations were underway, the targets of the attacks were constantly changed according to the battlefield (tactical) situation.


title: German spring offensive

text: Once they began advancing, the Germans struggled to maintain the momentum, partly due to logistical issues. The fast-moving stormtrooper units could not carry enough food and ammunition to sustain themselves for long, and the army could not move in supplies and reinforcements fast enough to assist them. The Allies concentrated their main forces in the essential areas (the approaches to the Channel Ports and the rail junction of Amiens). Strategically worthless ground, which had been devastated by years of conflict, was left lightly defended. Within a few weeks, the danger of a German breakthrough had passed, though related fighting continued until July.


title: German spring offensive

text: The German Army made the deepest advances either side had made on the Western Front since 1914. They re-took much ground that they had lost in 1916–17 and took some ground that they had not yet controlled. Despite these apparent successes, they suffered heavy casualties in return for land that was of little strategic value and hard to defend. The offensive failed to deliver a blow that could save Germany from defeat, which has led some historians to describe it as a pyrrhic victory. In July 1918, the Allies regained their numerical advantage with the arrival of American troops. In August, they used this and improved tactics to launch a counteroffensive. The ensuing Hundred Days Offensive resulted in the Germans losing all of the ground that they had taken in the Spring Offensive, the collapse of the Hindenburg Line, and the capitulation of Germany that November.


title: German spring offensive

text: The German High Command—in particular General Erich Ludendorff, the Chief Quartermaster General at Oberste Heeresleitung, the supreme army headquarters—has been criticised by military historians for the failure to formulate sound and clear strategy. Ludendorff privately conceded that Germany could no longer win a war of attrition, yet he was not ready to give up the German gains in the west and east and was one of the main obstacles to the German government's attempts to reach a settlement with the Western Allies.


title: German spring offensive

text: Although Ludendorff was unsure whether the Americans would enter the war in strength, at a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff of the German armies on the Western Front on 11 November 1917, he decided to launch an offensive. The German government and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, nominally the Chief of the General Staff, were not party to the planning process. Eventually it was decided to launch Operation Michael near Saint-Quentin, at the hinge between the French and British armies, and strike north to Arras. The main reason for the choice was tactical expediency. The ground on this sector of the front would dry out much sooner after the winter and spring rains and would therefore be easier to advance across. It was also a line of least resistance as the British and French armies were weak in the sector.


title: German spring offensive

text: The intention was not to reach the English Channel coast, but to break through the Allied lines and roll up the flank of the British army from the south, pushing it back against the Channel Ports or destroying it if the British chose to stand and fight. Further operations such as Operation Georgette and Operation Mars were designed to strike further north to seize the remaining Allied ports in Belgium and France while diverting Allied forces from "Michael". However, these remained only secondary and weaker operations, subordinate to "Michael".


title: German spring offensive

text: The constant changing of operational targets once the offensive was underway gave the impression the German command had no coherent strategic goal. Any capture of an important strategic objective, such as the Channel ports, or the vital railway junction of Amiens would have occurred more by chance than by design.


title: German spring offensive

text: The German army had concentrated many of its best troops into stormtrooper units, trained in infiltration tactics to infiltrate and bypass enemy front line units, leaving these strong points to be "mopped-up" by follow-up troops. The stormtrooper tactic was to attack and disrupt enemy headquarters, artillery units and supply depots in the rear areas, as well as to occupy territory rapidly. Each major formation "creamed off" its best and fittest soldiers into storm units; several complete divisions were formed from these elite units. This process gave the German army an initial advantage in the attack, but meant that the best formations would suffer disproportionately heavy casualties, while the quality of the remaining formations declined as they were stripped of their best personnel to provide the stormtroops. The Germans also failed to arm their forces with a mobile exploitation force, such as cavalry, to exploit gains quickly. This tactical error meant the infantry had to keep up an exhausting tempo of advance. Notwithstanding the effectiveness of the stormtroopers, the following German infantry often made attacks in large traditional waves and suffered heavy casualties.


title: German spring offensive

text: To enable the initial breakthrough, Lieutenant Colonel Georg Bruchmüller, a German artillery officer, developed the ', (literally: rolling fire, rolling barrage) an effective and economical creeping barrage scheme. There were three phases: first, a brief bombardment on the enemy's command and communications (headquarters, telephone exchanges, etc.); then, destruction of their artillery; lastly an attack upon the enemy front-line infantry defences. Bombardment would always be brief so as to retain surprise. Bruchmüller's tactics were made possible by the vast numbers of heavy guns—with correspondingly plentiful amounts of ammunition for them—which Germany possessed by 1918.


title: German spring offensive

text: In their turn, the Allies had developed defences in depth, reducing the proportion of troops in their front line and pulling reserves and supply dumps back beyond German artillery range. This change had been made after experience of the successful German use of defence in depth during 1917.


title: German spring offensive

text: In theory, the front line was an "outpost zone" (later renamed the "forward zone"), lightly held by snipers, patrols and machine-gun posts only. Behind, out of range of German field artillery, was the "battle zone" where the offensive was to be firmly resisted, and behind that again, out of range of all but the heaviest German guns, was a "rear zone" where reserves were held ready to counter-attack or seal off penetrations. In theory, a British infantry division (with nine infantry battalions) deployed three battalions in the outpost zone, four battalions in the battle zone and two battalions in the rear zone.


title: German spring offensive

text: This change had not been completely implemented by the Allies. In particular, in the sector held by the British Fifth Army, which they had recently taken over from French units, the defences were incomplete and there were too few troops to hold the complete position in depth. The rear zone existed as outline markings only, and the battle zone consisted of battalion "redoubts" which were not mutually supporting (allowing stormtroopers to penetrate between them).


title: German spring offensive

text: On 21 March 1918, the Germans launched a big offensive against the British Fifth Army and the right wing of the British Third Army.


title: German spring offensive

text: The artillery bombardment began at 4.40am on March 21. The bombardment [hit] targets over an area of , the biggest barrage of the entire war. Over 1,100,000 shells were fired in five hours...


title: German spring offensive

text: The German armies involved were—from north to south—the Seventeenth Army under Otto von Below, the Second Army under Georg von der Marwitz and the Eighteenth Army under Oskar von Hutier, with a Corps (Gruppe Gayl) from the Seventh Army supporting Hutier's attack. Although the British had learned the approximate time and location of the offensive, the weight of the attack and of the preliminary bombardment was an unpleasant surprise. The Germans were also fortunate in that the morning of the attack was foggy, allowing the stormtroopers leading the attack to penetrate deep into the British positions undetected.


title: German spring offensive

text: By the end of the first day, the British had lost 7,512 dead and 10,000 wounded and the Germans had broken through at several points on the front of the British Fifth Army. After two days the Fifth Army was in full retreat. As they fell back, many of the isolated "redoubts" were left to be surrounded and overwhelmed by the following German infantry. The right wing of Third Army became separated from the retreating Fifth Army, and also retreated to avoid being outflanked.


title: German spring offensive

text: Ludendorff failed to follow the correct stormtrooper tactics, as described above. His lack of a coherent strategy to accompany the new tactics was expressed in a remark to one of his Army Group commanders, Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, in which he stated, "We chop a hole. The rest follows." Ludendorff's dilemma was that the most important parts of the Allied line were also the most strongly held. Much of the German advance was achieved where it was not strategically significant. Because of this, Ludendorff continually exhausted his forces by attacking strongly entrenched British units. At Arras on 28 March, he launched a hastily prepared attack (Operation Mars) against the left wing of the British Third Army, to try to widen the breach in the Allied lines. In this sector, the British defences in depth were complete and fully manned, some of the opening German bombardment hit only empty positions and there was no fog to give cover to the attacking stormtroopers. After a day, the Germans had achieved only minor gains and had suffered heavy casualties. Operation Mars was immediately cancelled.


title: German spring offensive

text: The German breakthrough had occurred just to the north of the boundary between the French and British armies. The French commander-in-chief, General Pétain, sent reinforcements to the sector too slowly in the opinion of the British commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Haig, and the British government, though the historian Elizabeth Greenhalgh disputes this, arguing that Petain sent the six additional divisions quicker than had been arranged with Haig – in 2 days instead of 4 – and arranging for extra divisions several times – 12 divisions on 23 March and 13 on the 25/26 March – before requests came in from Haig. The Allies reacted by appointing the French General Ferdinand Foch to coordinate all Allied activity in France, and subsequently as commander-in-chief of all Allied forces everywhere.


title: German spring offensive

text: The success of Operation Michael led German infantry to advance too far from its supply bases and railheads. The stormtrooper units leading the advance carried supplies for only a few days, to avoid being overburdened, and relied on supplies delivered quickly from the rear. The advance was slowed by supply shortages, which gave Allied commanders more time to reinforce the threatened areas and to slow the advance still more. German supply difficulties were made worse by the direction of advance, which crossed the wasteland created during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and by Operation Alberich, the German retirement to the Hindenburg Line from February to March 1917.


title: German spring offensive

text: After a few days, the German advance began to falter, as the infantry became exhausted and it became increasingly difficult to move artillery and supplies forward to support them. Fresh British and Australian units were moved to the vital rail centre of Amiens and the defence began to stiffen. After fruitless attempts to capture Amiens, Ludendorff called off Operation Michael on 5 April. By the standards of the time, there had been a substantial advance. It was, however, of little value; a Pyrrhic victory in terms of the casualties suffered by the crack troops, as the vital positions of Amiens and Arras remained in Allied hands. The newly-won territory would later be difficult to defend against Allied counter-attacks.


title: German spring offensive

text: The Allies lost nearly 255,000 men (British, British Empire and French). They also lost 1,300 artillery pieces and 200 tanks. All of this could be replaced, either from French and British factories or from American manpower. German troop losses were 239,000 men, many of them specialist shocktroops ("Stoßtruppen") who were irreplaceable. In terms of morale, the initial German jubilation at the successful opening of the offensive soon turned to disappointment, as it became clear that the attack had not achieved decisive results.


title: German spring offensive

text: "Michael" had drawn British forces to defend Amiens, leaving the rail route through Hazebrouck and the approaches to the Channel ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk vulnerable. German success here could choke the British into defeat.


title: German spring offensive

text: The attack started on 9 April after a "Feuerwalze". The main attack was made on the open and flat sector defended by the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps. After an entire year spent in the trenches, the Portuguese were tired and had suffered heavy losses. They were being replaced in the front line by fresh British divisions, an operation that was planned to be completed on 9 April, the same day as the Germans attacked the sector. The process of relief in place was poorly organized by the British First Army's command, and the Portuguese 1st Division had been withdrawn to the rear on 6 April, leaving the Portuguese 2nd Division to defend the entire sector alone. They were left with an extensive front, without natural obstacles which might benefit the defence.


title: German spring offensive

text: Hit hard by the "Feuerwalze" bombardment and under the assault of eight German divisions, the Portuguese 2nd Division made a desperate defence, trying to hold their positions, which, however, were rapidly enveloped and overrun by the masses of German forces. The 2nd Division was virtually annihilated, losing more than 7,000 men. The British 40th Division, on the northern flank of the Portuguese, also rapidly collapsed before the attack, opening a gap that further facilitated the envelopment of the Portuguese by the Germans. However, under much less pressure from the Germans and occupying good defensive positions protected by the La Bassée Canal, the British 55th Division on the southern flank of the Portuguese were able to hold much of their position throughout the battle.


title: German spring offensive

text: The next day, the Germans widened their attack to the north, forcing the defenders of Armentières to withdraw before they were surrounded, and capturing most of the Messines Ridge. By the end of the day, the few British divisions in reserve were hard-pressed to hold a line along the River Lys.


title: German spring offensive

text: Without French reinforcements, it was feared that the Germans could advance the remaining to the ports within a week. The commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, issued an "Order of the Day" on 11 April stating, "With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end."


title: German spring offensive

text: However, the German offensive had stalled because of logistical problems and exposed flanks. Counterattacks by British, French and Anzac forces slowed and stopped the German advance. Ludendorff ended "Georgette" on 29 April.


title: German spring offensive

text: As with "Michael", losses were roughly equal, approximately 110,000 men wounded or killed, each. Again, the strategic results were disappointing for the Germans. Hazebrouck remained in Allied hands and the Germans occupied a vulnerable salient under fire from three sides. The British abandoned the comparatively worthless territory they had captured at vast cost the previous year around Ypres, freeing several divisions to face the German attackers.


title: German spring offensive

text: While "Georgette" ground to a halt, a new attack on French positions was planned to draw forces further away from the Channel and allow renewed German progress in the north. The strategic objective remained to split the British and the French and gain victory before American forces could make their presence felt on the battlefield. The Americans were originally deployed in the quiet Saint-Mihiel sector in Lorraine where they had their first significant engagement in the defence of Seicheprey on 20 April. After the British had held off the "Michael" advance on the Somme, the US 1st Division was moved to reinforce the line in that sector in mid-April and launched their first attack of the war on Cantigny on 28 May 1918.


title: German spring offensive

text: The German attack took place on 27 May, between Soissons and Reims. The sector was partly held by four depleted British divisions which were "resting" after their exertions earlier in the year. In this sector, the defences had not been developed in depth, mainly due to the obstinacy of the commander of the French Sixth Army, General Denis Auguste Duchêne. As a result, the "Feuerwalze" was very effective and the Allied front, with a few notable exceptions, collapsed. Duchêne's massing of his troops in the forward trenches also meant there were no local reserves to delay the Germans once the front had broken. Despite French and British resistance on the flanks, German troops advanced to the Marne River and Paris seemed a realistic objective. There was a frenzied atmosphere in Paris, which German long-range guns had been shelling since 21 March, with many citizens fleeing and the government drawing up plans to evacuate to Bordeaux.


title: German spring offensive

text: Yet again, losses were much the same on each side: and casualties up to 6 June. German losses were again mainly from the difficult-to-replace assault divisions.


title: German spring offensive

text: Although Ludendorff had intended to be a prelude to a decisive offensive () to defeat the British forces further north, he made the error of reinforcing merely tactical success by moving reserves from Flanders to the Aisne, whereas Foch and Haig did not overcommit reserves to the Aisne. Ludendorff sought to extend westward with Operation Gneisenau, intending to draw yet more Allied reserves south, widen the German salient and link with the German salient at Amiens.


title: German spring offensive

text: The French had been warned of this attack (the Battle of Matz ()) by information from German prisoners, and their defence in depth reduced the impact of the artillery bombardment on 9 June. Nonetheless, the German advance (consisting of 21 divisions attacking over a front) along the Matz River was impressive, resulting in an advance of despite fierce French and American resistance. At Compiègne, a sudden French counter-attack on 11 June, by four divisions and 150 tanks (under General Charles Mangin) with no preliminary bombardment, caught the Germans by surprise and halted their advance. "Gneisenau" was called off the following day.


title: German spring offensive

text: Ludendorff now postponed and launched the German Seventh, First and Third Armies in the (Peace Offensive) of 15 July, a renewed attempt to draw Allied reserves south from Flanders and to expand the salient created by eastwards. An attack east of Rheims was thwarted by the French defence in depth. In many sectors, the Germans, deprived of any surprise as their fuel-starved air force had lost air superiority to the Allies, advanced no further than the French Forward Zone, and nowhere did they break the French Battle (Second) Zone.


title: German spring offensive

text: Although German troops southwest of Rheims succeeded in crossing the River Marne, the French launched a major offensive of their own on the west side of the salient on 18 July, threatening to cut off the Germans in the salient. Ludendorff had to evacuate most of the salient by 7 August and was finally cancelled. The initiative had clearly passed to the Allies, who were shortly to begin the Hundred Days Offensive which ended the war.


title: German spring offensive

text: The "Kaiserschlacht" offensives had yielded large territorial gains for the Germans, in First World War terms. However, victory was not achieved and the German armies were severely depleted, exhausted and in exposed positions. The territorial gains were in the form of salients which greatly increased the length of the line that would have to be defended when Allied reinforcements gave the Allies the initiative. In six months, the strength of the German army had fallen from 5.1 million fighting men to 4.2 million. By July, the German superiority of numbers on the Western Front had sunk to 207 divisions to 203 Allied, a negligible lead which would be reversed as more American troops arrived. German manpower was exhausted. The German High Command predicted they would need 200,000 men per month to make good the losses suffered. Returning convalescents could supply 70,000–80,000/month but there were only 300,000 recruits available from the next annual class of eighteen-year-olds. Even worse, they lost most of their best-trained men: stormtrooper tactics had them leading the attacks. Even so, about a million German soldiers remained tied up in the east until the end of the war.


title: German spring offensive

text: The Allies had been badly hurt but not broken. The lack of a unified high command was partly rectified by the appointment of General Foch to the supreme command, and coordination would improve in later Allied operations. American troops were for the first time also used as independent formations.


title: German spring offensive

text: Ironically, the offensive's initial success may have hastened Germany's defeat by undermining morale. German leadership had hitherto told their soldiers that food and other supply shortages were comparable on both sides. By breaking into Allied lines, the German soldiers realized that the Allies were in fact much better fed and supplied than they were, and thus that their leaders had been lying to them.


title: Children's literature

text: Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader.


title: Children's literature

text: Children's literature can be traced to traditional stories like fairy tales, that have only been identified as children's literature in the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, that adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. Children's literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" because many classic children's books were published then.


title: Children's literature

text: There is no single or widely used definition of children's literature. It can be broadly defined as the body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain or instruct young people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories written exclusively for children, and fairy tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other primarily orally transmitted materials or more specifically defined as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama intended for and used by children and young people. One writer on children's literature defines it as "all books written for children, excluding works such as comic books, joke books, cartoon books, and non-fiction works that are not intended to be read from front to back, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference materials". However, others would argue that children's comics should also be included: "Children's Literature studies has traditionally treated comics fitfully and superficially despite the importance of comics as a global phenomenon associated with children".


title: Children's literature

text: The "International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature" notes that "the boundaries of genre... are not fixed but blurred". Sometimes, no agreement can be reached about whether a given work is best categorized as literature for adults or children. Some works defy easy categorization. J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series was written and marketed for children, but it is also popular among adults. The series' extreme popularity led "The New York Times" to create a separate bestseller list for children's books.


title: Children's literature

text: Despite the widespread association of children's literature with picture books, spoken narratives existed before printing, and the root of many children's tales go back to ancient storytellers. Seth Lerer, in the opening of "Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter", says, "This book presents a history of what children have heard and read... The history I write of is a history of "reception"."


title: Children's literature

text: Early children's literature consisted of spoken stories, songs, and poems, used to educate, instruct, and entertain children.


title: Children's literature

text: It was only in the eighteenth century, with the development of the concept of childhood, that a separate genre of children's literature began to emerge, with its own divisions, expectations, and canon. The earliest of these books were educational books, books on conduct, and simple ABCs—often decorated with animals, plants, and anthropomorphic letters.


title: Children's literature

text: In 1962, French historian Philippe Ariès argues in his book "Centuries of Childhood" that the modern concept of childhood only emerged in recent times. He explains that children were in the past not considered as greatly different from adults and were not given significantly different treatment. As evidence for this position, he notes that, apart from instructional and didactic texts for children written by clerics like the Venerable Bede and Ælfric of Eynsham, there was a lack of any genuine literature aimed specifically at children before the 18th century.


title: Children's literature

text: Other scholars have qualified this viewpoint by noting that there was a literature designed to convey the values, attitudes, and information necessary for children within their cultures, such as the "Play of Daniel" from the twelfth century. Pre-modern children's literature, therefore, tended to be of a didactic and moralistic nature, with the purpose of conveying conduct-related, educational and religious lessons.


title: Children's literature

text: During the seventeenth century, the concept of childhood began to emerge in Europe. Adults saw children as separate beings, innocent and in need of protection and training by the adults around them. The English philosopher John Locke developed his theory of the tabula rasa in his 1690 "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding". In Locke's philosophy, "tabula rasa" was the theory that the (human) mind is at birth a "blank slate" without rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences. A corollary of this doctrine was that the mind of the child was born blank and that it was the duty of the parents to imbue the child with correct notions. Locke himself emphasized the importance of providing children with "easy pleasant books" to develop their minds rather than using force to compel them: "Children may be cozen'd into a knowledge of the letters; be taught to read, without perceiving it to be anything but a sport, and play themselves into that which others are whipp'd for." He also suggested that picture books be created for children.


title: Children's literature

text: In the nineteenth century, a few children's titles became famous as classroom reading texts. Among these were the fables of Aesop and Jean de la Fontaine and Charles Perraults's 1697 "Tales of Mother Goose". The popularity of these texts led to the creation of a number of nineteenth-century fantasy and fairy tales for children which featured magic objects and talking animals.


title: Children's literature

text: Another influence on this shift in attitudes came from Puritanism, which stressed the importance of individual salvation. Puritans were concerned with the spiritual welfare of their children, and there was a large growth in the publication of "good godly books" aimed squarely at children. Some of the most popular works were by James Janeway, but the most enduring book from this movement, still read today, especially In modernised versions, is "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678) by John Bunyan.


title: Children's literature

text: Chapbooks, pocket-sized pamphlets that were often folded instead of being stitched, were published in Britain; illustrated by woodblock printing, these inexpensive booklets reprinted popular ballads, historical re-tellings, and folk tales. Though not specifically published for children at this time, young people enjoyed the booklets as well. Johanna Bradley says, in "From Chapbooks to Plum Cake", that chapbooks kept imaginative stories from being lost to readers under the strict Puritan influence of the time.


title: Children's literature

text: Hornbooks also appeared in England during this time, teaching children basic information such as the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer. These were brought from England to the American colonies in the mid-seventeenth century.


title: Children's literature

text: The first such book was a catechism for children, written in verse by the Puritan John Cotton. Known as "Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes", it was published in 1646, appearing both in England and Boston. Another early book, "The New England Primer", was in print by 1691 and used in schools for 100 years. The primer begins with "The young Infant's or Child's morning Prayer" and evening prayer. It then shows the alphabet, vowels, consonants, double letters, and syllables before providing a religious rhyme of the alphabet, beginning "In Adam's fall We sinned all...", and continues through the alphabet. It also contained religious maxims, acronyms, spelling help and other educational items, all decorated by woodcuts.


title: Children's literature

text: In 1634, the "Pentamerone" from Italy became the first major published collection of European folk tales. Charles Perrault began recording fairy tales in France, publishing his first collection in 1697. They were not well received among the French literary society, who saw them as only fit for old people and children. In 1658, John Amos Comenius in Bohemia published the informative illustrated "Orbis Pictus", for children under six learning to read. It is considered to be the first picture book produced specifically for children.


title: Children's literature

text: The first Danish children's book was "The Child's Mirror" by Niels Bredal in 1568, an adaptation of a courtesy book by the Dutch priest Erasmus. "A Pretty and Splendid Maiden's Mirror", an adaptation of a German book for young women, became the first Swedish children's book upon its 1591 publication. Sweden published fables and a children's magazine by 1766.


title: Children's literature

text: In Italy, Giovanni Francesco Straparola released "The Facetious Nights of Straparola" in the 1550s. Called the first European storybook to contain fairy-tales, it eventually had 75 separate stories and written for an adult audience. Giulio Cesare Croce also borrowed from some stories children enjoyed for his books.


title: Children's literature

text: Russia's earliest children's books, primers, appeared in the late sixteenth century. An early example is "ABC-Book", an alphabet book published by Ivan Fyodorov in 1571. The first picture book published in Russia, Karion Istomin's "The Illustrated Primer", appeared in 1694. Peter the Great's interest in modernizing his country through Westernization helped Western children's literature dominate the field through the eighteenth century. Catherine the Great wrote allegories for children, and during her reign, Nikolai Novikov started the first juvenile magazine in Russia.


title: Children's literature

text: The modern children's book emerged in mid-18th-century England. A growing polite middle-class and the influence of Lockean theories of childhood innocence combined to create the beginnings of childhood as a concept. In an article for the British Library, professor MO Grenby writes, "in the 1740s, a cluster of London publishers began to produce new books designed to instruct and delight young readers. Thomas Boreman was one. Another was Mary Cooper, whose two-volume "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book" (1744) is the first known nursery rhyme collection. But the most celebrated of these pioneers is John Newbery, whose first book for the entertainment of children was "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book"."


title: Children's literature

text: Widely considered the first modern children's book, "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book" was the first children's publication aimed at giving enjoyment to children, containing a mixture of rhymes, picture stories and games for pleasure. Newbery believed that play was a better enticement to children's good behavior than physical discipline, and the child was to record his or her behaviour daily. The book was child–sized with a brightly colored cover that appealed to children—something new in the publishing industry. Known as gift books, these early books became the precursors to the toy books popular in the nineteenth century. Newbery was also adept at marketing this new genre. According to the journal "The Lion and the Unicorn", "Newbery's genius was in developing the fairly new product category, children's books, through his frequent advertisements... and his clever ploy of introducing additional titles and products into the body of his children's books." Professor Grenby writes, "Newbery has become known as the 'father of children's literature' chiefly because he was able to show that publishing children's books could be a commercial success."


title: Children's literature

text: The improvement in the quality of books for children and the diversity of topics he published helped make Newbery the leading producer of children's books in his time. He published his own books as well as those by authors such as Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith; the latter may have written "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes", Newbery's most popular book.


title: Children's literature

text: Another philosopher who influenced the development of children's literature was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that children should be allowed to develop naturally and joyously. His idea of appealing to a children's natural interests took hold among writers for children. Popular examples included Thomas Day's "The History of Sandford and Merton", four volumes that embody Rousseau's theories. Furthermore, Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth's "Practical Education: The History of Harry and Lucy" (1780) urged children to teach themselves.


title: Children's literature

text: Rousseau's ideas also had great influence in Germany, especially on German Philanthropism, a movement concerned with reforming both education and literature for children. Its founder, Johann Bernhard Basedow, authored "Elementarwerk" as a popular textbook for children that included many illustrations by Daniel Chodowiecki. Another follower, Joachim Heinrich Campe, created an adaptation of "Robinson Crusoe" that went into over 100 printings. He became Germany's "outstanding and most modern" writer for children. According to Hans-Heino Ewers in "The International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature", "It can be argued that from this time, the history of European children's literature was largely written in Germany."


title: Children's literature

text: The Brothers Grimm preserved and published the traditional tales told in Germany. They were so popular in their home country that modern, realistic children's literature began to be looked down on there. This dislike of non-traditional stories continued there until the beginning of the next century. In addition to their collection of stories, the Grimm brothers also contributed to children's literature through their academic pursuits. As professors, they had a scholarly interest in the stories, striving to preserve them and their variations accurately, recording their sources.


title: Children's literature

text: A similar project was carried out by the Norwegian scholars Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, who collected Norwegian fairy tales and published them as "Norwegian Folktales", often referred to as "Asbjørnsen and Moe". By compiling these stories, they preserved Norway's literary heritage and helped create the Norwegian written language.


title: Children's literature

text: Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen traveled through Europe and gathered many well-known fairy tales and created new stories in the fairy tale genre.


title: Children's literature

text: In Switzerland, Johann David Wyss published "The Swiss Family Robinson" in 1812, with the aim of teaching children about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world and self-reliance. The book became popular across Europe after it was translated into French by Isabelle de Montolieu.


title: Children's literature

text: E. T. A. Hoffmann's tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" was published in 1816 in a German collection of stories for children, "Kinder-Märchen". It is the first modern short story to introduce bizarre, odd and grotesque elements in children's literature and thereby anticipates Lewis Carroll's tale, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". There are not only parallels concerning the content (the weird adventures of a young girl in a fantasy land), but also the origin of the tales as both are dedicated and given to a daughter of the author's friends.


title: Children's literature

text: The shift to a modern genre of children's literature occurred in the mid-19th century; didacticism of a previous age began to make way for more humorous, child-oriented books, more attuned to the child's imagination. The availability of children's literature greatly increased as well, as paper and printing became widely available and affordable, the population grew and literacy rates improved.


title: Children's literature

text: "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas Hughes appeared in 1857, and is considered to be the founding book in the school story tradition. However, it was Lewis Carroll's fantasy, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", published in 1865 in England, that signaled the change in writing style for children to an imaginative and empathetic one. Regarded as the first "English masterpiece written for children" and as a founding book in the development of fantasy literature, its publication opened the "First Golden Age" of children's literature in Britain and Europe that continued until the early 1900s. The fairy-tale absurdity of Wonderland has solid historical ground as a satire of the serious problems of the Victorian era. Lewis Carroll is ironic about the prim and all-out regulated life of the "golden" Victorian century. One other noteworthy publication was Mark Twain's book "Tom Sawyer" (1876), which was one of the first "boy books", intended for children but enjoyed by both children and adults alike. These were classified as such for the themes they contained, consisting of fighting and work. Another important book of that decade was "The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby", by Rev. Charles Kingsley (1862), which became extremely popular and remains a classic of British children's literature.


title: Children's literature

text: In 1883, Carlo Collodi wrote the first Italian fantasy novel, "The Adventures of Pinocchio", which was translated many times. In that same year, Emilio Salgari, the man who would become "the adventure writer par excellence for the young in Italy" first published his legendary character "Sandokan". In Britain, "The Princess and the Goblin" and its sequel "The Princess and Curdie", by George MacDonald, appeared in 1872 and 1883, and the adventure stories "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped", both by Robert Louis Stevenson, were extremely popular in the 1880s. Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" was first published in 1894, and J. M. Barrie told the story of Peter Pan in the novel "Peter and Wendy" in 1911. Johanna Spyri's two-part novel "Heidi" was published in Switzerland in 1880 and 1881.


title: Children's literature

text: In the US, children's publishing entered a period of growth after the American Civil War in 1865. Boys' book writer Oliver Optic published over 100 books. In 1868, the "epoch-making" "Little Women", the fictionalized autobiography of Louisa May Alcott, was published. This "coming of age" story established the genre of realistic family books in the United States. Mark Twain released "Tom Sawyer" in 1876. In 1880 another bestseller, "", a collection of African American folk tales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, appeared.


title: Children's literature

text: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a plethora of children's novels began featuring realistic, non-magical plotlines. Certain titles received international success such as Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" (1883), L. M. Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables" (1908), and Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" (1869).


title: Children's literature

text: Literature for children had developed as a separate category of literature especially in the Victorian era, with some works becoming internationally known, such as Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) and its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass". At the end of the Victorian era and leading into the Edwardian era, Beatrix Potter was an author and illustrator best known for her children's books, which featured animal characters. In her thirties, Potter published "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" in 1902. Potter went on to produce 23 children's books and become very wealthy. In 1903 she patented a Peter Rabbit doll, making Peter the first licensed character. Michael O. Tunnell and James S. Jacobs, professors of children's literature at Brigham Young University, write, "Potter was the first to use pictures as well as words to tell the story, incorporating coloured illustration with text, page for page." Another classic of the period is Anna Sewell's animal novel "Black Beauty" (1877).


title: Children's literature

text: Rudyard Kipling published "The Jungle Book" in 1894. A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. In the latter years of the 19th century, precursors of the modern picture book were illustrated books of poems and short stories produced by English illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Kate Greenaway. These had a larger proportion of pictures to words than earlier books, and many of their pictures were in colour. Some British artists made their living illustrating novels and children's books, among them Arthur Rackham, Cicely Mary Barker, W. Heath Robinson, Henry J. Ford, John Leech, and George Cruikshank. In the 1890s, some of the best known fairy tales from England were compiled in Joseph Jacobs' "English Fairy Tales", including "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", "The Three Little Pigs", "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Tom Thumb".


title: Children's literature

text: The Kailyard School of Scottish writers, notably J. M. Barrie, creator of "Peter Pan" (1904), presented an idealised version of society and brought fantasy and folklore back into fashion. In 1908, Kenneth Grahame wrote the children's classic "The Wind in the Willows" and the Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell's first book, "Scouting for Boys", was published. Inspiration for Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel "The Secret Garden" (1910) was the Great Maytham Hall Garden in Kent. While fighting in the trenches for the British Army in World War I, Hugh Lofting created the character of Doctor Dolittle, who appears in a series of twelve books.


title: Children's literature

text: The Golden Age of Children's Literature ended with World War I. The period before World War II was much slower in children's publishing. The main exceptions in England were the publications of "Winnie-the-Pooh" by A. A. Milne in 1926, the first "Mary Poppins" book by P. L. Travers in 1934, "The Hobbit" by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937, and the Arthurian "The Sword in the Stone" by T. H. White in 1938. Children's mass paperback books were first released in England in 1940 under the Puffin Books imprint, and their lower prices helped make book buying possible for children during World War II. Enid Blyton's books have been among the world's bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Blyton's books are still enormously popular and have been translated into almost 90 languages. She wrote on a wide range of topics including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives and is best remembered today for her Noddy, "The Famous Five", The Secret Seven, and "The Adventure Series". The first of these children's stories, "Five on a Treasure Island", was published in 1942.


title: Children's literature

text: In the 1950s, the book market in Europe began to recover from the effects of the two world wars. An informal literary discussion group associated with the English faculty at the University of Oxford, were the "Inklings", with the major fantasy novelists C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as its main members. C. S. Lewis published the first installment of "The Chronicles of Narnia" series in 1950, while Tolkien is best known, in addition to "The Hobbit", as the author of "The Lord of the Rings" (1954). Another writer of fantasy stories is Alan Garner author of "Elidor" (1965), and "The Owl Service" (1967). The latter is an adaptation of the myth of Blodeuwedd from the "Mabinogion", set in modern Wales – it won Garner the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British author.


title: Children's literature

text: Mary Norton wrote "The Borrowers" (1952), featuring tiny people who borrow from humans. Dodie Smith's "The Hundred and One Dalmatians" was published in 1956. Philippa Pearce's "Tom's Midnight Garden" (1958) has Tom opening the garden door at night and entering into a different age. William Golding's 1954 novel "Lord of the Flies" focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.


title: Children's literature

text: Roald Dahl wrote children's fantasy novels which were often inspired from experiences from his childhood, with often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour. Dahl was inspired to write "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (1964), featuring the eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka, having grown up near two chocolate makers in England who often tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies into the other's factory. His other works include "James and the Giant Peach" (1961), "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (1971), "The BFG" (1982), "The Witches" (1983), and "Matilda" (1988). Starting in 1958, Michael Bond published more than twenty humorous stories about Paddington Bear.


title: Children's literature

text: Boarding schools in literature are centred on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, and are most commonly set in English boarding schools. Popular school stories from this period include Ronald Searle's comic "St Trinian's" (1949–1953) and his illustrations for Geoffrey Willans's "Molesworth" series, Jill Murphy's "The Worst Witch", and the "Jennings" series by Anthony Buckeridge.


title: Children's literature

text: Ruth Manning-Sanders's first collection, "A Book of Giants", retells a number of giant stories from around the world. Susan Cooper's "The Dark Is Rising" is a five-volume fantasy saga set in England and Wales. Raymond Briggs' children's picture book "The Snowman" (1978) has been adapted as an animation, shown every Christmas on British television. The Reverend. W. Awdry and son Christopher's "The Railway Series" features Thomas the Tank Engine. Margery Sharp's series "The Rescuers" is based on a heroic mouse organisation. The third Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo published "War Horse" in 1982. Dick King-Smith's novels include "The Sheep-Pig" (1984). Diana Wynne Jones wrote the young adult fantasy novel "Howl's Moving Castle" in 1986. Anne Fine's "Madame Doubtfire" (1987) is based around a family with divorced parents. Anthony Horowitz's "Alex Rider" series begins with "Stormbreaker" (2000).


title: Children's literature

text: Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" is an epic trilogy of fantasy novels consisting of "Northern Lights" (1995, published as "The Golden Compass" in North America), "The Subtle Knife" (1997), and "The Amber Spyglass" (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The three novels have won a number of awards, most notably the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year prize, won by "The Amber Spyglass". "Northern Lights" won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in 1995.


title: Children's literature

text: Neil Gaiman wrote the dark fantasy novella "Coraline" (2002). His 2008 fantasy, "The Graveyard Book", traces the story of a boy who is raised by the supernatural occupants of a graveyard. In 2001, Terry Pratchett received the Carnegie Medal (his first major award) for "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents". Cressida Cowell's "How to Train Your Dragon" series were published between 2003 and 2015.


title: Children's literature

text: J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" fantasy sequence of seven novels chronicles the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter. The series began with "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in 1997 and ended with the seventh and final book "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in 2007; becoming the best selling book-series in history. The series has been translated into 67 languages, so placing Rowling among the most translated authors in history.


title: Children's literature

text: While Daniel Defoe wrote "Robinson Crusoe" in 1719 (spawning so many imitations it defined a genre, Robinsonade), adventure stories written specifically for children began in the nineteenth century. Early examples from British authors include Frederick Marryat's "The Children of the New Forest" (1847) and Harriet Martineau's "The Peasant and the Prince" (1856).


title: Children's literature

text: The Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with W. H. G. Kingston, R. M. Ballantyne and G. A. Henty specializing in the production of adventure fiction for boys. This inspired writers who normally catered to adult audiences to write for children, a notable example being Robert Louis Stevenson's classic pirate story "Treasure Island" (1883).


title: Children's literature

text: In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries. In the 1930s he began publishing his Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the English Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of them involve sailing; fishing and camping are other common subjects. Biggles was a popular series of adventure books for young boys, about James Bigglesworth, a fictional pilot and adventurer, by W. E. Johns. Between 1941 and 1961 there were 60 issues with stories about Biggles, and in the 1960s occasional contributors included the BBC astronomer Patrick Moore. Between 1940 and 1947, W. E. Johns contributed sixty stories featuring the female pilot Worrals. Evoking epic themes, Richard Adams's 1972 survival and adventure novel "Watership Down" follows a small group of rabbits who escape the destruction of their warren and seek to establish a new home.


title: Children's literature

text: Geoffrey Trease and Rosemary Sutcliff brought a new sophistication to the historical adventure novel. Philip Pullman in the Sally Lockhart novels and Julia Golding in the Cat Royal series have continued the tradition of the historical adventure.


title: Children's literature

text: An important aspect of British children's literature has been comic books and magazines. Amongst the most popular comics have been "The Beano" and "The Dandy" (both published in the 1930s). British comics in the 20th century evolved from illustrated penny dreadfuls of the Victorian era (featuring Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin and "Varney the Vampire"). First published in the 1830s, according to "The Guardian", penny dreadfuls were "Britain's first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young." Robin Hood featured in a series of penny dreadfuls in 1838 which sparked the beginning of the mass circulation of Robin stories.


title: Children's literature

text: Important early magazines or story papers for older children were the "Boy's Own Paper", published from 1879 to 1967 and "The Girl's Own Paper" published from 1880 until 1956. In the 1890s, half-penny publications succeeded the penny dreadfuls in popularity among British children. These included "The Half-penny Marvel" and "Union Jack". From 1896, the cover of the half-penny comic "Illustrated Chips" featured the long-running comic strip of the tramps Weary Willie and Tired Tim, with its readers including a young Charlie Chaplin.


title: Children's literature

text: Other story papers for older boys were "The Hotspur" (1933 to 1959) and "The Rover", which started in 1922 and was absorbed into "Adventure" in 1961 and "The Wizard" in 1963, and eventually folded in 1973. Many prominent authors contributed to the "Boy's Own Paper": cricketer W.G. Grace wrote for several issues, along with authors Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and R. M. Ballantyne, as well as Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement. Contributors to "The Girl's Own Paper" included Noel Streatfeild, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Sarah Doudney (1841–1926), Angela Brazil, Richmal Crompton, Fanny Fern, and Baroness Orczy.


title: Children's literature

text: The "Eagle" was a popular British comic for boys, launched in 1950 by Marcus Morris, an Anglican vicar from Lancashire. Revolutionary in its presentation and content, it was enormously successful; the first issue sold about 900,000 copies. Featured in colour on the front cover was its most recognisable story, "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future", created with meticulous attention to detail. It was first published from 1950 to 1969, and relaunched from 1982 to 1994. Its sister comic was "Girl", whose early issues from 1951 featured the strip "Kitty Hawke and her All-Girl Air Crew". "Roy of the Rovers", an immensely popular comic strip featuring Roy Race, a striker for the fictional football team Melchester Rovers, first appeared in the "Tiger" in 1954. First published by Martin Handford in 1987, more than 73 million "Where's Wally?" picture puzzle books had been sold around the world by 2007.


title: Children's literature

text: Children's literature has been a part of American culture since Europeans first settled in America. The earliest books were used as tools to instill self-control in children and preach a life of morality in Puritan society. Eighteenth-century American youth began to shift away from the social upbringing of its European counterpart, bringing about a change in children's literature. It was in this time that "A Little Book for Little Children" was written by T. W. in 1712. It includes what is thought to be the earliest nursery rhyme and one of the earliest examples of a textbook approaching education from the child's point of view, rather than the adult's.


title: Children's literature

text: Children's magazines in the United States began with the "Young" "Misses' Magazine" (1806) of Brooklyn; New York.


title: Children's literature

text: One of the most famous books of American children's literature is L. Frank Baum's fantasy novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", published in 1900. "By combining the English fondness for word play with the American appetite for outdoor adventure", Connie Epstein in "International Companion Encyclopedia Of Children's Literature" says Baum "developed an original style and form that stands alone". Baum wrote fourteen more Oz novels, and other writers continued the Oz series into the twenty-first century.


title: Children's literature

text: Demand continued to grow in North America between World War I and World War II, helped by the growth of libraries in both Canada and the United States. Children's reading rooms in libraries, staffed by specially trained librarians, helped create demand for classic juvenile books. Reviews of children's releases began appearing regularly in "Publishers Weekly" and in "The Bookman" magazine began to publish regular reviews of children's releases. The first Children's Book Week was launched in 1919. In that same year, Louise Seaman Bechtel became the first person to head a juvenile book publishing department in the country. She was followed by May Massee in 1922, and Alice Dalgliesh in 1934.


title: Children's literature

text: The American Library Association began awarding the Newbery Medal, the first children's book award, in 1922. The Caldecott Medal for illustration followed in 1938. The first book by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her life on the American frontier, "Little House in the Big Woods" appeared in 1932. In 1937 Dr. Seuss published his first book, entitled, "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street". The young adult book market developed during this period, thanks to sports books by popular writer John R. Tunis', the novel "Seventeenth Summer" by Maureen Daly, and the "Sue Barton" nurse book series by Helen Dore Boylston.


title: Children's literature

text: The already vigorous growth in children's books became a boom in the 1950s, and children's publishing became big business. In 1952, American journalist E. B. White published "Charlotte's Web", which was described as "one of the very few books for young children that face, squarely, the subject of death". Maurice Sendak illustrated more than two dozen books during the decade, which established him as an innovator in book illustration. The Sputnik crisis that began in 1957, provided increased interest and government money for schools and libraries to buy science and math books and the non-fiction book market "seemed to materialize overnight".


title: Children's literature

text: The 1960s saw an age of new realism in children's books emerge. Given the atmosphere of social revolution in 1960s America, authors and illustrators began to break previously established taboos in children's literature. Controversial subjects dealing with alcoholism, death, divorce, and child abuse were now being published in stories for children. Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" in 1963 and Louise Fitzhugh's "Harriet the Spy" in 1964 are often considered the first stories published in this new age of realism.


title: Children's literature

text: Esther Forbes in "Johnny Tremain" (1943) and Mildred D. Taylor in "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" (1976) continued the tradition of the historical adventure in an American setting. The modern children's adventure novel sometimes deals with controversial issues like terrorism, as in Robert Cormier's "After the First Death" in 1979, and warfare in the Third World, as in Peter Dickinson's "AK" in 1990.


title: Children's literature

text: In books for a younger age group, Bill Martin and John Archambault's "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" (1989) presented a new spin on the alphabet book. Laura Numeroff published "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" in 1985 and went on to create a series of similarly named books that is still popular for children and adults to read together.


title: Children's literature

text: Lloyd Alexander's "The Chronicles of Prydain" (1964-1968) was set in a fictionalized version of medieval Britain.


title: Children's literature

text: Johann David Wyss wrote the adventure novel "The Swiss Family Robinson" (1812). The period from 1890 until World War I is considered the Golden Age of Children's Literature in Scandinavia. Erik Werenskiold, Theodor Kittelsen, and Dikken Zwilgmeyer were especially popular, writing folk and fairy tales as well as realistic fiction. The 1859 translation into English by George Webbe Dasent helped increase the stories' influence. One of the most influential and internationally most successful Scandinavian children's books from this period is Selma Lagerlöfs "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils". Astrid Lindgren ("Pippi Longstocking") and Jostein Gaarder ("Sophie's World") are two of the best-known Scandinavian writers internationally. In Finland, some of the most significant children's book writers include Tove Jansson ("Moomins"), Oiva Paloheimo ("Tirlittan") and Elina Karjalainen ("Uppo-Nalle").


title: Children's literature

text: The interwar period saw a slow-down in output similar to Britain's, although "one of the first mysteries written specifically for children", "Emil and the Detectives" by Erich Kästner, was published in Germany in 1930. German writers Michael Ende ("The Neverending Story") and Cornelia Funke ("Inkheart") achieved international success with their fantasy books.


title: Children's literature

text: The period during and following World War II became the Classic Age of the picture book in Switzerland, with works by Alois Carigiet, Felix Hoffmann, and Hans Fischer. Nineteen sixty-three was the first year of the Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy, which was described as "the most important international event dedicated to the children's publishing". For four days it brings together writers, illustrators, publishers, and book buyers from around the world.


title: Children's literature

text: Russian folktales were collected by Aleksandr Afanasyev in his three-volume "Narodnye russkie skazki", and a selection of these were published in "Русские детские сказки" (Russian Children's Fairy Tales) in 1871. By the 1860s, literary realism and non-fiction dominated children's literature. More schools were started, using books by writers like Konstantin Ushinsky and Leo Tolstoy, whose "Russian Reader" included an assortment of stories, fairy tales, and fables. Books written specifically for girls developed in the 1870s and 1880s. Publisher and journalist Evgenia Tur wrote about the daughters of well-to-do landowners, while Alexandra Nikitichna Annenskaya's stories told of middle-class girls working to support themselves. Vera Zhelikhovsky, Elizaveta Kondrashova, and Nadezhda Lukhmanova also wrote for girls during this period.


title: Children's literature

text: Children's non-fiction gained great importance in Russia at the beginning of the century. A ten-volume children's encyclopedia was published between 1913 and 1914. Vasily Avenarius wrote fictionalized biographies of important people like Nikolai Gogol and Alexander Pushkin around the same time, and scientists wrote for books and magazines for children. Children's magazines flourished, and by the end of the century there were 61. Lidia Charskaya and continued the popularity of girls' fiction. Realism took a gloomy turn by frequently showing the maltreatment of children from lower classes. The most popular boys' material was Sherlock Holmes, and similar stories from detective magazines.


title: Children's literature

text: The state took control of children's literature during the October Revolution. Maksim Gorky edited the first children's "Northern Lights" under Soviet rule. People often label the 1920s as the Golden Age of Children's Literature in Russia. Samuil Marshak led that literary decade as the "founder of (Soviet) children's literature". As head of the children's section of the State Publishing House and editor of several children's magazines, Marshak exercised enormous influence by recruiting Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam to write for children.


title: Children's literature

text: In 1932, professional writers in the Soviet Union formed the USSR Union of Writers, which served as the writer's organization of the Communist Party. With a children's branch, the official oversight of the professional organization brought children's writers under the control of the state and the police. Communist principles like collectivism and solidarity became important themes in children's literature. Authors wrote biographies about revolutionaries like Lenin and Pavlik Morozov. Alexander Belyayev, who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, became Russia's first science fiction writer. According to Ben Hellman in the "International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature", "war was to occupy a prominent place in juvenile reading, partly compensating for the lack of adventure stories", during the Soviet Period. More political changes in Russia after World War II brought further change in children's literature. Today, the field is in a state of flux because some older authors are being rediscovered and others are being abandoned.


title: Children's literature

text: The Chinese Revolution of 1911 and World War II brought political and social change that revolutionized children's literature in China. Western science, technology, and literature became fashionable. China's first modern publishing firm, Commercial Press, established several children's magazines, which included "Youth Magazine", and "Educational Pictures for Children". The first Chinese children's writer was Sun Yuxiu, an editor of Commercial Press, whose story "The Kingdom Without a Cat" was written in the language of the time instead of the classical style used previously. Yuxiu encouraged novelist Shen Dehong to write for children as well. Dehong went on to rewrite 28 stories based on classical Chinese literature specifically for children. In 1932, Zhang Tianyi published "Big Lin and Little Lin", the first full-length Chinese novel for children.


title: Children's literature

text: The Chinese Revolution of 1949 changed children's literature again. Many children's writers were denounced, but Tianyi and Ye Shengtao continued to write for children and created works that were aligned with Maoist ideology. The 1976 death of Mao Zedong provoked more changes that swept China. The work of many writers from the early part of the century became available again. In 1990 came "General Anthology of Modern Children's Literature of China", a fifteen-volume anthology of children's literature since the 1920s.


title: Children's literature

text: In Brazil, Monteiro Lobato wrote a series of 23 books for children known as Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (The Yellow Woodpecker Ranch), between 1920 and 1940. The series is considered representative of Brazilian children's literature and the Brazilian equivalent to children's classics such as C. S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia" and L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" series. The concept was introduced in Monteiro Lobato's 1920 short story "A Menina do Narizinho Arrebitado", and was later republished as the first chapter of "Reinações de Narizinho", which is the first novel of the series. The main setting is the "Sítio do Picapau Amarelo", where a boy (Pedrinho), a girl (Narizinho) and their living and thinking anthropomorphic toys enjoy exploring adventures in fantasy, discovery and learning. On several occasions, they leave the ranch to explore other worlds such as Neverland, the mythological Ancient Greece, an underwater world known as "Reino das Águas Claras" (Clear Waters Kingdom), and even the outer space. The "Sítio" is often symbolized by the character of Emília, Lobato's most famous creation.


title: Children's literature

text: Christian missionaries first established the Calcutta School-Book Society in the 19th century, creating a separate genre for children's literature in the country. Magazines and books for children in native languages soon appeared. In the latter half of the century, Raja Shivprasad wrote several well-known books in Hindustani. A number of respected Bengali writers began producing Bengali literature for children, including Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who translated some stories and wrote others himself. Nobel Prize-winner Rabindranath Tagore wrote plays, stories, and poems for children, including one work illustrated by painter Nandalal Bose. They worked from the end of the nineteenth century into the beginning of the twentieth. Tagore's work was later translated into English, with Bose's pictures. Behari Lal Puri was the earliest writer for children in Punjabi. His stories were didactic in nature.


title: Children's literature

text: The first full-length children's book was "Khar Khar Mahadev" by Narain Dixit, which was serialized in one of the popular children's magazines in 1957. Other writers include Premchand, and poet Sohan Lal Dwivedi. In 1919, Sukumar Ray wrote and illustrated nonsense rhymes in the Bengali language, and children's writer and artist Abanindranath Tagore finished "Barngtarbratn". Bengali children's literature flourished in the later part of the twentieth century. Educator Gijubhai Badheka published over 200 books in the Children's literature in Gujarati language, and many are still popular. Other popular Gujarati children's authors were Ramanlal Soni and Jivram Joshi. In 1957, political cartoonist K. Shankar Pillai founded the Children's Book Trust publishing company. The firm became known for high quality children's books, and many of them were released in several languages. One of the most distinguished writers is Pandit Krushna Chandra Kar in Oriya literature, who wrote many good books for children, including "Pari Raija", "Kuhuka Raija", "Panchatantra", and "Adi Jugara Galpa Mala". He wrote biographies of many historical personalities, such as "Kapila Deva". In 1978, the firm organized a writers' competition to encourage quality children's writing. The following year, the Children's Book Trust began a writing workshop and organized the First International Children's Book Fair in New Delhi. Children's magazines, available in many languages, were widespread throughout India during this century. Ruskin Bond is also a famous Anglo-Indian writer for children.


title: Children's literature

text: One of the pioneering children's writer in Persian was Mehdi Azar-Yazdi. His award-winning work, "Good Stories for Good Children", is a collection of stories derived from the stories in Classical Persian literature re-written for children.


title: Children's literature

text: Originally, for centuries, stories were told by Africans in their native languages, many being told during social gatherings. Stories varied between mythic narratives dealing with creation and basic proverbs showcasing human wisdom. These narratives were passed down from generation to generation orally. Since its independence in 1960, Nigeria has witnessed a rise in the production of children's literature by its people, the past three decades contributing the most to the genre. Most children's books depict the African culture and lifestyle, and trace their roots to traditional folktales, riddles, and proverbs. Authors who have produced such works include Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Amos Tutuola, Flora Nwapa, and Buchi Emecheta. Publishing companies also aided in the development of children's literature.


title: Children's literature

text: Children's literature can be divided into categories, either according to genre or the intended age of the reader.


title: Children's literature

text: A literary genre is a category of literary compositions. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content, or length. According to Anderson, there are six categories of children's literature (with some significant subgenres):


title: Children's literature

text: The criteria for these divisions are vague, and books near a borderline may be classified either way. Books for younger children tend to be written in simple language, use large print, and have many illustrations. Books for older children use increasingly complex language, normal print, and fewer (if any) illustrations. The categories with an age range are these:


title: Children's literature

text: Pictures have always accompanied children's stories. A papyrus from Byzantine Egypt, shows illustrations accompanied by the story of Hercules' labors. Modern children's books are illustrated in a way that is rarely seen in adult literature, except in graphic novels. Generally, artwork plays a greater role in books intended for younger readers (especially pre-literate children). Children's picture books often serve as an accessible source of high quality art for young children. Even after children learn to read well enough to enjoy a story without illustrations, they (like their elders) continue to appreciate the occasional drawings found in chapter books.


title: Children's literature

text: According to Joyce Whalley in "The International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature", "an illustrated book differs from a book with illustrations in that a good illustrated book is one where the pictures enhance or add depth to the text." Using this definition, the first illustrated children's book is considered to be "Orbis Pictus" which was published in 1658 by the Moravian author Comenius. Acting as a kind of encyclopedia, "Orbis Pictus" had a picture on every page, followed by the name of the object in Latin and German. It was translated into English in 1659 and was used in homes and schools around Europe and Great Britain for many years.


title: Children's literature

text: Early children's books, such as "Orbis Pictus", were illustrated by woodcut, and many times the same image was repeated in a number of books regardless of how appropriate the illustration was for the story. Newer processes, including copper and steel engraving were first used in the 1830s. One of the first uses of Chromolithography (a way of making multi-colored prints) in a children's book was demonstrated in "Struwwelpeter", published in Germany in 1845. English illustrator Walter Crane refined its use in children's books in the late 19th century.


title: Children's literature

text: Another method of creating illustrations for children's books was etching, used by George Cruikshank in the 1850s. By the 1860s, top artists were illustrating for children, including Crane, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, and John Tenniel. Most pictures were still black-and-white, and many color pictures were hand colored, often by children. "The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators" credits Caldecott with "The concept of extending the meaning of text beyond literal visualization".


title: Children's literature

text: Twentieth-century artists such as Kay Nielson, Edmund Dulac, and Arthur Rackham produced illustrations that are still reprinted today. Developments in printing capabilities were reflected in children's books. After World War II, offset lithography became more refined, and painter-style illustrations, such as Brian Wildsmith's were common by the 1950s.


title: Children's literature

text: "Illustrators of Children's Books, 1744-1945" (Horn Book, 1947), an extensively detailed four volume work by Louise Payson Latimer, Bertha E. Mahony and Beulah Folmsbee, catalogs illustrators of children's books over two centuries.


title: Children's literature

text: Professional organizations, dedicated publications, individual researchers and university courses conduct scholarship on children's literature. Scholarship in children's literature is primarily conducted in three different disciplinary fields: literary studies/cultural studies (literature and language departments and humanities), library and information science, and education. (Wolf, et al., 2011).


title: Children's literature

text: Typically, children's literature scholars from literature departments in universities (English, German, Spanish, etc. departments), cultural studies, or in the humanities conduct literary analysis of books. This literary criticism may focus on an author, a thematic or topical concern, genre, period, or literary device and may address issues from a variety of critical stances (poststructural, postcolonial, New Criticism, psychoanalytic, new historicism, etc.). Results of this type of research are typically published as books or as articles in scholarly journals.


title: Children's literature

text: The field of Library and Information Science has a long history of conducting research related to children's literature.


title: Children's literature

text: Most educational researchers studying children's literature explore issues related to the use of children's literature in classroom settings. They may also study topics such as home use, children's out-of-school reading, or parents' use of children's books. Teachers typically use children's literature to augment classroom instruction.


title: Children's literature

text: Controversies often emerge around the content and characters of prominent children's books. Well-known classics that remain popular throughout decades commonly become criticized by critics and readers as the values of contemporary culture change. Critical analysis of children's literature is common through children's literary journals as well as published collections of essays contributed to by psychoanalysts, scholars and various literary critics such as Peter Hunt.


title: Children's literature

text: Popular classics such as "The Secret Garden", "Pippi Longstocking", "Peter Pan", "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" have been criticized for their racial stereotyping.


title: Children's literature

text: The academic journal "Children's Literature Review" provides critical analysis of many well known children's books. In its 114th volume, the journal discusses the cultural stereotypes in Belgian cartoonist Herge's "Tintin" series in reference to its depiction of people from the Congo.


title: Children's literature

text: After the scramble for Africa which occurred between the years of 1881 and 1914 there was a large production of children's literature which attempted to create an illusion of what life was like for those who lived on the African continent. This was a simple technique in deceiving those who only relied on stories and secondary resources. Resulting in a new age of books which put a "gloss" on imperialism and its teachings at the time. Thus encouraging the idea that the colonies who were part of the African continent were perceived as animals, savages and inhuman-like. Therefore needing cultured higher class Europeans to share their knowledge and resources with the locals. Also promoting the idea that the people within these places were as exotic as the locations themselves. Examples of these books include:


title: Children's literature

text: "The Five Chinese Brothers", written by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by Kurt Wiese has been criticized for its stereotypical caricatures of Chinese people. Helen Bannerman's "The Story of Little Black Sambo" and Florence Kate Upton's "The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg" have also been noted for their racist and controversial depictions. The term "sambo", a racial slur from the American South caused a widespread banning of Bannerman's book. Author Julius Lester and illustrator Jerry Pinkney revised the story as "Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo", making its content more appropriate and empowering for ethnic minority children. Feminist theologian Dr. Eske Wollrad claimed Astrid Lindgren's "Pippi Longstocking" novels "have colonial racist stereotypes", urging parents to skip specific offensive passages when reading to their children. Criticisms of the 1911 novel "The Secret Garden" by author Frances Hodgson Burnett claim endorsement of racist attitudes toward black people through the dialogue of main character Mary Lennox. Hugh Lofting's "The Story of Doctor Dolittle" has been accused of "white racial superiority", by implying through its underlying message that an ethnic minority person is less than human.


title: Children's literature

text: The picture book "The Snowy Day", written and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats was published in 1962 and is known as the first picture book to portray an African-American child as a protagonist. Middle Eastern and Central American protagonists still remain underrepresented in North American picture books. According to the Cooperative Children's Books Center (CCBC) at University of Wisconsin Madison, which has been keeping statistics on children's books since the 1980s, in 2016, out of 3,400 children's books received by the CCBC that year, only 278 were about Africans or African Americans. Additionally, only 92 of the books were written by Africans or African Americans. In his interview in the book "Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book", Jerry Pinkney mentioned how difficult it was to find children's books with black children as characters. In the literary journal "The Black Scholar", Bettye I. Latimer has criticized popular children's books for their renditions of people as almost exclusively white, and notes that "Dr. Seuss" books contain few ethnic minority people. The popular school readers "Fun with Dick and Jane" which ran from the 1930s until the 1970s, are known for their whitewashed renditions of the North American nuclear family as well as their highly gendered stereotypes. The first black family did not appear in the series until the 1960s, thirty years into its run.