Cold War children’s literature
“one of the most fruitful sources of knowledge about the United States and its citizens, their attitudes, prejudices, values, and institutions”
-Paul Deane, Mirrors of American Culture
Books are powerful ideological and educational tools, especially in the hands of children. For historians, as Paul Deane notes in Mirrors of American Culture (1991), children’s literature can be “one of the most fruitful sources of knowledge about the United States and its citizens, their attitudes, prejudices, values, and institutions” (vii). Historians have examined children’s literature as a source of cultural history for several periods and from various angles. Some explored literary themes, propaganda, and educational aspects of children’s literature while others shed light on how politics permeates children’s books. However, Cold War children’s reading material still holds greater insights to be uncovered, especially given the historical context of censorship, curation, and broader Cold War cultural narratives. Although scholars have explored the ways in which children’s literature reflected specific themes and motifs, more research is required to fully understand how children’s literature reflected the broader culture of Cold War America and how it embodied Cold War ideology.
From the 1940s through the 1960s, the government, religious institutions, and other civic organizations influenced children’s education and literature through initiatives like the National Defense Education Act, the National Organization for Decent Literature, and Citizens for Decency. The American Library Association created a Library Bill of Rights to minimize negative impacts of censorship and curation, but McCarthyism left little out of reach when it came to blacklisting. Concurrently, authors published exposés on the shortcomings of the American education system like Arther S. Trace Jr.’s What Ivan Knows that Johnny Doesn’t. Trace compared Soviet education with its American counterpart to identify weaknesses, particularly regarding science and math. Literacy rates were also scrutinized. Combined, these kinds of domestic issues and the war against godless communism (and all its moral failings) fostered a unique (and growing) microcosm of the cultural Cold War in children’s literature. However, little has been done to weave a broader tapestry of the impacts these influences had on children’s literature. This dissertation seeks to fill that void. This study will uncover the values, ideals, morays, and other cultural indicators that were prevalent in children’s reading material from 1945 and 1960. Understanding the influences that made children’s literature and reading material a cultural front can shed light on the broader cultural Cold War given the importance placed on children’s books and the power they wield. Those influences may include government initiatives, religious and civic organizations, and simple curation by authors, publishers, librarians, schools, and parents.
Cultural history is the broader methodological framework for this research, and literature and children’s reading materials, including children’s books and periodicals, like The Weekly Reader and Highlights, are essential primary sources necessary to ascertain the cultural themes, motifs, and ideas that were highlighted and encouraged during the Cold War or what broader sociocultural implications those ideals had. Some studies have considered the 1959 rewrites of Nancy Drew books, and Brittney Brown found that to appease decency boards, Nancy Drew’s character was altered to remove some of her rebellious spirit and make her “more traditionally feminine–the housewife of mid-twentieth century hetero-normative standards.” Changes like this are indicative of a broader cultural effort, likely linked to Cold War ideology, which demonstrates that children’s literature was, indeed, a cultural front.
The researcher will scour secondary sources as well to pinpoint the most relevant theoretical and philosophical frameworks to organize and analyze various cultural inputs. Children’s literature is unique in that language and images are used to convey a message, so both literary analysis and visual interpretations will be essential. For primary source research, the researcher will identify and examine popular, required, recommended, banned, and discouraged titles from the Cold War period, including periodicals for children. In doing this, they will expose many curatorial influences, including newspaper articles, government initiatives, institutional efforts, and demand. Government statutes, education and school records, book sales, organization meeting minutes, and newspaper articles will be essential. These might include titles like Sunday School Times from Liberty’s special collections, as well as other newspaper titles, many of which are available online. Records from the Office of Education are housed around the country, and each state maintains its own records. Accessing these records for all 50 states may not be feasible, and what those records include is currently unknown. Pouring over similar studies may prove to be a fruitful exercise in the search for good sources of book sales/popularity data and school records, but proxies may be necessary. In those cases, oral history interviews may be conducted. Not only could oral history methods fill in the gaps in available documentary evidence, but interviews could enlighten the researcher about other contemporary considerations enriching the anthropological side of practicing cultural history.
After completing a Master of Liberal Arts with an interdisciplinary thesis entitled “Greener Gables: Anne Shirley’s Feminine Utopia and Women’s History in Victorian Canada,” the researcher shifted her focus toward Cold War history. With a background in both literary analysis and historical methods combined with educational foundations in the social sciences, the researcher possesses the skills and critical perspective required to execute a cultural history study to understand how children’s literature served as a cultural front during the Cold War.