Pick up almost any children’s book published in Britain before the 1700s and you’ll find it an uncomfortable read — not because of anything…
okay so I've been reading about the history of children's publishing in the UK and genuinely — it's wild how dark the starting point was.
before the 1700s, books written for children were basically just pamphlets telling them to be good or they'd die. not metaphorically. literally. there were popular books about pious children who died young as a lesson.
and then one guy in 1744 — John Newbery, a bookseller in London — went "what if kids had a book that was just... fun" and published A Little Pretty Pocket-Book and suddenly everything was different.
fast forward a bit and you get Alice in Wonderland (no moral, just vibes and a talking rabbit), Beatrix Potter letting Peter eat someone's garden and get away with it, Roald Dahl essentially writing revenge fantasies for children, and then Harry Potter making publishers realise kids would read 700-page books if the story was good enough.
there's also a whole section about independent publishing and how it's opened things up for writers who'd never survive the traditional submission process — including a sweet spider called Freddie who has his own adventure series now and I think about that a lot.
anyway if you're interested in book history or publishing or just want to feel good about how far storytelling for kids has come:
