HoB_ABCs

Title ABC of Animals

Brief description An ABC book illustrated with drawings of animals. Printed on linen. Illustrated cloth wrappers. Gift of Jerome Cushman, 1998.

Full description The ABC of Animals is a very short alphabet book (only seven pages long) and is printed in color on linen, rather than paper. It features prominent illustrations depicting animals whose names begin with a certain letter--but only every fourth letter due to the brief page count. It uses bright colors and exotic, fun-filled, subject matter to share the alphabet with young readers.

Literacy While the ABC of Animals uses depictions of exotic animals in its introduction to the alphabet, it represents most of the letters through the animal names alone. The use of more durable material (in this case linen) shows that the process of educating children began at an early age.

The decision to use exotic animals that children might be less familiar with and without representational images seems to indicate an intent to teach children the phonics of the alphabet primarily via the sounds of words alone. Without a previous knowledge of obscure animals, children were presented with a connection primarily between the respective letters and the sounds of the animal names that use them, rather than more concrete, familiar concepts.

The notions of phonics as a fundamental building block and the connection between the sounds of animals and the sounds of the alphabet trace back to the Renaissance works of Comenius. While words in verse could also develop cultural and societal literacy by conveying meaning, the words in ABC of Animals seem to exist in a vacuum, free of deeper meanings, and concerning themselves more with the animalistic act of creating the sounds of the letters rather than the civilized meaning thereof.

Childhood The ABC of Animals, though brief, is filled with bright color, fanciful beasts, and silly antics. These elements highlight the growing sentiment that childhood was a special time, free of the realism that underscores adulthood. In its whimsical depictions of what might normally be rather dangerous animals, it discourages the young reader from a more somber worldview, and encourages play and frivolity, even in the process of learning.

Iconography The cover of the ABC of Animals hints at a growing fascination with exoticism and adaptation of design sensibilities with the East. While the inside illustrations are much less culturally specific, the diversity of animals depicted and listed, indicates an age in which young readers could be exposed to curiosities originating from every corner of the world during the height of Western imperialism.

As more people began to live in ever-larger cities, the importance of teaching children purely practical matters also began to decrease. Children no longer needed to learn about the domesticated animals of the farm and instead could enjoy learning about bears dancing with boa constrictors rather than cavorting with pigs and chickens.

Production During the end of the 19th Century, the McLoughlin Bros. published a great variety of books and other materials for the children's market. Their adoption of chromolithographic printing techniques is found in the ABC of Animals, especially in the brightly colored cover images, which would have no doubt been very appealing to audiences of all ages. Although the innovations of the industrial revolution allowed for books to be economically produced to reach more niche markets, the use of more expensive linen perhaps necessitated the smaller of size of these books.