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9781421407210 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Imaginary Citizens:

Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868
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From the colonial period to the end of the Civil War, childrens books taught young Americans how to be good citizens and gave them the freedom, autonomy, and possibility to imagine themselves as such, despite the actual limitations of the law concerning child citizenship. Imaginary Citizens argues that the origin and evolution of the concept of citizenship in the United States centrally involved struggles over the meaning and boundaries of childhood. Children were thought of as more than witnesses to American history and governancethey were representatives of 'the people' in general. Early on, the parent-child relationship was used as an analogy for the relationship between England and America, and later, the president was equated to a father and the people to his children. There was a backlash, however. In order to contest the patriarchal idea that all individuals owed childlike submission to their rulers, Americans looked to new theories of human development that limited political responsibility to those with a mature ability to reason. Yet Americans also based their concept of citizenship on the idea that all people are free and accountable at every age. Courtney Weikle-Mills discusses such characters as Goody Two-Shoes, Ichabod Crane, and Tom Sawyer in terms of how they reflect these conflicting ideals.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Subjects to Citizens: The Politics of Childhood and Children's Literature
1. Youth as a Time of Choice: Children's Reading in Colonial New England
2. Affectionate Citizenship: Educating Child Readers for a New Nation
3. Child Readers of the Novel: The Problem of Childish Citizenship
4. Reading for Social Profit: Economic Citizenship as Children's Citizenship
5. Natural Citizenship: Children, Slaves, and the Book of Nature
Conclusion: The Legacy of the Fourteenth Amendment: LimitedThinking on Children's Citizenship
Notes
Index

""Weikle-Mills's rich investigation of connections between child readers and political empowerment significantly contributes to both the study of children's literature and the study of American social and political history.""

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