Jerry Griswold - Audacious Kids: The Classic American Childrens Story

Praise for Audacious Kids

Lucid and persuasively argued. Indeed, he manages that difficult thing in writing about childrens literature: He manages to provide the reader with an interesting new intellectual angle on these books, without condescending to his material or diminishing its elusive and potent magic.

New York Times

Griswolds analysis helps us appreciate that this countrys childrens literature is not marginal but squarely within our central literary tradition.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Griswolds analysis is coherent and persuasive.

Kirkus Reviews

This is an impressive book. The achievement of Audacious Kids is major. It is not often that a scholarly book is so entertaining. The writing is articulate, the style lively.

The Library Quarterly

Griswold is successful in making the case for serious consideration of Americas childrens classics.

Southern Review

An insightful blend of literary and social history that ends with an interesting political perspective: these stories are symbolic of our nations fight for independence and struggle toward maturity.

Booklist

One of the most exciting books of the year. It challenges accepted thinking and is extremely readable, likely to appeal not only to scholars but also to those with nostalgic memories of Little Women and The Wizard of Oz.

Signal

This engaging book will quickly become an essential authority for students of childrens literature and should reach a wide audience among librarians, parents, and scholars of American literature.

Choice

This study by Jerry Griswold is boldly audacious, compelling, and convincing in its argument. Griswold defines The Golden Age of Childrens Books as the period between the Civil War and World War I [and] finds a pattern that threads its way through the childrens books of this period. Griswold amasses persuasive evidence from a number of disciplines [in a] sophisticated analysis of twelve novels: The Wizard of Oz, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,Little Lord Fauntleroy, Tarzan of the Apes,The Prince and the Pauper,The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,Little Women, Toby Tyler,Hans Brinker,The Secret Garden, and Pollyanna. The interpretations of each book are lively, original, and persuasive. This book is felicitously written and provocatively argued, truly a significant contribution to the study of American literature and culture.

American Historical Review

In addition to dealing with American history, Audacious Kids includes literary and psychological interpretations of the books under consideration and biographical discussions of the books authors. In the hands of a less capable writer, such an eclectic approach could easily result in disjointed and uneven work, but Griswold, like Rumplestiltskin, pulls all of his strands together and spins them into gold.

Journal of American History

Audacious Kids contributes a coherent new framework for the study of Americas formative literature, one certain to stimulate and enlighten both academic and general interest readers. An example of outstanding literary criticism, Griswolds book illuminates the literature it analyzes and itself provides an example of lucid, pleasurable prose.

Horn Book

Griswold writes clearly, convincingly, and even entertainingly. This thoughtful union of the scholarly and the readable deserves a very wide audience.

Library Journal

The books virtues are clear argumentation and convincing analysis. The cultural and psychoanalytical criticism are well integrated and mutually illuminating, buttressed by relevant information about the personal histories, composing habits, and general mindsets of the authors discussed.

American Literature

An intriguing analysis of the dynamics of a dozen classic works published during the Golden Age of American Childrens Books (18651914).

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Griswolds book is impressive in its close, productive readings of each of the novels and for the picture he paints of the relationship between literature and society. Audacious Kids grants to childrens literature an important place on the literary and cultural scene.

History of Education Quarterly

In a time of unprecedented and often impenetrable critical discourse, this book is deliberately jargon free and accessible to both scholarly and general audiences. It is written with clarity and humor, with inventive energy and an agile, synthesizing intelligence. Audacious Kids begins a long-awaited, collective consideration of these key works of national literature.

Childrens Literature

Griswolds enthusiasm for these novels is abundantly clear and is the books most appealing feature.

Childrens Literature Association Quarterly

This is an excellent book.

Book Report

Audacious Kids

The Classic American Childrens Story

Revised Edition

JERRY GRISWOLD

1992, 2014 Jerry Griswold

All rights reserved. Published 1992, 2014

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published in the United States of America as Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in Americas Classic Childrens Books by Oxford University Press, Inc., 1992

Published as The Classic American Childrens Story: Novels of the Golden Age by Penguin Books, 1996

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Griswold, Jerome.

Audacious Kids : the Classic American Childrens Story / Jerry Griswold. Revised edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-1457-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-1458-4 (electronic)

ISBN-10: 1-4214-1457-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-4214-1458-9 (electronic)

1. Childrens stories, AmericanHistory and criticism. 2. ChildrenBooks and readingUnited States. I. Title.

PS374.C454G75 2014

813.009'9282dc23 2013046572

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible.

There is no past without the sense of play that keeps it fresh.

CARLOS FUENTES, DISTANT RELATIONS

Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in Americas Classic Childrens Books was published in 1992 by the trade (as distinguished from the academic) division of Oxford University Press. When the hardcover sold out, Penguin Books acquired the rights and in 1996 brought out a paperback edition (changing the title to The Classic American Childrens Story: Novels of the Golden Age). A few years later the book went out of print, though it seems still to have a very active life in the ghostly world of photocopying.