HoB_ABCs

Title ABC Child's First Book

Brief description Date based on Osborne: Osborne Coll., 691 First and last leaves pasted down to wrappers. Illustrated tan wrappers printed in black. Ex libris Olive Percival.

Full description The implied reader of this book seems to be a little boy, not a little girl. This book includes prayers and lessons of morality intended to instill religion into the child, while teaching him his alphabet and how to read. The lessons in this primer include vowels, consonants and lessons in words of two to four letters, as is typical of primers.

The religious wording in the book implies that the little boy knew his Bible stories very well and was able to learn to read by using the knowledge of those stories and prayers that he was already familiar with. As well as the religious teachings, this primer encouraged boys to learn to read as the poem on the front cover tells us:He who ne'er knows the ABC*For ever will a blockhead be;*Learn to read well, be wise and then*You will be lov'd by all good men

Literacy This primer was intended to teach a boy how to read and prepare him to learn to write using more advanced primers and/or workbooks. The boy using this primer would also receive lessons in cultural literacy, an understanding of one's cultural surroundings and environment.

In learning prayers and portions of the Bible, the child was required to be familiar with the stories to able to learn the letters and words from the prayers he had memorized. The boy learned to start working with numbers, a comprehension beyond literacy of only reading and writing.

Reading comprehension is important for the child using this primer to understand and ingest the moral teachings contained within. In learning to read, the child learned morals, the importance of God and the importance of being literate and valuing his education.

Childhood Childhood is illustrated on the cover of this book as a family clustered together. Mother sits in a comfortable chair; book in her lap, while her older child and husband look at the pages she sees. A younger child is on the floor with his own book, looking at the first few pages studying the letters of the alphabet. The poem beneath the illustration enforces the notion that children should learn to read and be educated.

This depiction of the parents teaching their children to read was a popular one in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Laws were passed in Puritan communities (and other communities in the 19th century as well) that parents must teach their children to read, though these laws were rarely enforced.As with earlier primers, most notable being The New England Primer, this primer was meant for moral instruction, including religious iconography devoid of any humor, fiction, or fantasy.

Children were educated through moral and religious teachings and the notion of a childhood did not exist as a unique state of development. Children were seen as small adults to be educated to be pious and literate. The Puritans believed that everyone, including children should learn to read in order to read the Bible and have a direct relationship with God.

Iconography The front of ABC Child's First Book has an illustration depicting a family. The mother is sitting in a big chair with a book in hand. The happy family illustrated on the cover are reading and learning together. The child reading this book is reminded through the text to be an educated and moral person because God is always watching.

The cultural iconography and text remind the child that religion and education are entwined. The nineteenth century did not separate ideologies of the Church from those of education, and both were taught together. The child learning from this book was raised knowing the Bible stories, so that when he read the poem on the back cover, the child would already know the story of Job. The text also includes lessons in morality such as, "pray to God with a pure mind" and "Be just and kind, and God will love you," reminders to the child of the world and cultural environment.

Production During the time of publication of ABC Child's First Book there was much innovation due to industrial and technological progress. This was the beginning of the Victorian era. The subjects in children's books progressed from moral and religious teachings to teaching children to learn to read through depictions of industrialization such as railroads.

ABC Child's First Book was published as a nostalgic book for children, for parents who were not ready to embrace the progressive, changing times, but to instill the morals and religion from the previous era. The text was printed using letterpress and the images on the front and back cover were made with woodblocks.

Samuel Wood and Sons published this book, as well as many other children books in the nineteenth century in New York. As Richard Venezky said in The American Reading Script and its Nineteenth-Century Origins, Samuel Wood "was New York City's most important publisher of children's books in the nineteenth century, the compiler of the first graded series of readers, and an important Quaker publisher and educator." Venezky goes on to say that, "he [Woods] was the first publisher to compile a complete series of schoolbooks."

This primer is one of the books in that first series. After Woods' retirement, control of his firm passed to his sons and then a grandson and finally was absorbed by a larger firm during the Great Depression.