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The World of Children’s Literature: An
Introduction
Sheila Ray
In the world of children’s books, there are certain factors which are common to all
literatures. The need for stories is universal, and there can be few children, even in the
most deprived circumstances, who do not have the opportunity from a very early age, to
listen to people telling them stories. In some countries and in many ethnic groups, the
custom of oral story-telling continues into adulthood and, even in the most developed
countries, as late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was possible for
many people to learn all they needed to know by listening to others.
Worldwide, at the end of the twentieth century, there is a belief that literacy is
essential. Even in those societies where information technology is advanced, good
reading skills are essential to exploit it, and it is generally thought that the best way to
acquire fluency is through reading practice; children’s books are thus a practical
necessity.
The development of children’s literature everywhere has followed a similar pattern,
although in individual countries the stages in this development have come at different
times in the last five hundred years. In the early stages of a printed literature, there are
few or no books published specifically for children. There are perhaps a few books
intended for broadly educational purposes, such as the courtesy or behaviour books
printed in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries in European countries, or the twentieth-
century textbooks published to support the formal school curriculum in developing
countries. In this situation children, as they learn to read, also take over adult books
which appeal to them, a process helped by the fact that the early printed literature in
any society is likely to draw on traditional stories which contain elements which appeal
to every age group. Religion is also an important factor in the development of printed
literature and many of the earliest books intended specifically for children are simplified
versions of religious books or publications designed to support religious and moral
instruction. As European influences spread to other parts of the world many of the
books taken there by missionaries and teachers were of a religious nature.
Poetry and verse, ballads and nursery rhymes or their equivalent, also manifest
themselves at an early stage in the development of a printed literature for children, but
gradually stories written specially for children begin to appear. As the number of titles
being published increases, demands for books to meet a variety of interests and special
needs emerge. One of the problems which face developing countries in the twentieth
century is that they are expected to go through all the stages in a relatively short space