HoB_ABCs

Title The Young Child's ABC, Or, First Book

Brief description This reader was the first published by Samuel Wood, who was also the first publisher to compile a complete series of schoolbooks (Venezky). It was printed by J.C. Totten (New York City) and features numbers as well as letters. The book has 16 pages, will woodcut illustrations in black ink. 10 cm.

Full description With its 16 pages; small size (approximately 8 cm by 10 cm); dark, grainy-paper covers; and simple hand-stitched binding, this book exemplifies the chapbook, a form that became extremely popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries because it was easy to produce and inexpensive to buy. In fact, the use of images on the front cover attests to a sort of rapid, mass production: its two illustrations, of a hunting scene and of a lamb, are crooked, as if stamped on in haste. As its title tells us, the Young Child's A B C, or, First Book is geared to beginning readers, progressing from two-letter sounds to five-letter words and, finally, to a visual indication of syllables in two-syllable words.

Literacy Along with its guidance toward the building of basic syllables and words from letters, the Young Child's A B C schools its pupils in a literacy of orderliness, of comfort and a sense of place in one's village life, and of propriety. In this "First Book," everything is in its place: as depicted in the illustration on the back cover, the child learns from his mother within the safe boundaries of their neat, clean home; outside, the world is readily graspable not only by Christian religion, as seen in the image of the woman with the dove and the lamb, but also by the use of images of mostly common objects and institutions to ground the alphabetical adventure: an urn, a yoke, a wheel, a tree, a kite. The world of literacy is one in which one's environs become more accessible, more familiar, and more graspable; this world is not one in which knowledge complicates thinking or guides the learner toward questions.

Childhood The Young Child's A B C presents just one visual image of a child, on its back cover; this child is dressed well, standing by his mother as she teaches him in their neat, orderly home. Other imagery conveys an atmosphere of Christian piety as well as the trappings of a comfortable village life: A hunt on horseback; a woman petting a lamb and holding a dove; and a lamb sitting peacefully on the ground. The images accompanying the alphabet suggest a child who fits into that world: drawings of animals such as cats, dogs, quail, and foxes, as well as those of an inn, an urn, a yoke, a vice, and a wheel suggest immersion in a rural domestic sphere in which the child will take part. Beyond these close-to-home images, the pictures of a ship and of Xerxes assume and help to acculturate a child whose status within this world will not be threatened, but only promises to grow with more education.

Iconography The image featured on the Young Child's A B C's title page establishes woman at the center of learning, though not on her own terms--what these may be is irrelevant. Instead, she is a conduit through which Christian values of sacrifice and docility (the lamb) and piety for the Holy Spirit (the dove) permeate the order of things. As this image suggests, acquiescence to cultivation through maternal guidance benefits the natural world's beings and landscapes, which thrive in the respect for order that determines the frame. Here, each main feature surrounding the woman (bush, bird on branch, dove, tulips, lamb) is given its due in the composition; each has its place as an equal to all but the guiding spirit of the woman. This respect for order manifests itself in this book's array structure, which lays out its objects as discrete entities that the learner will grasp and incorporate. The book's images, as exemplified here in the ants, bell, cat, and dog, are simple, familiar creatures and objects from a comfortable village life; such images would pose no challenge to a denizen of that environment's conceptions of the world. Instead, the images here and on the title page help to ground a viewpoint that thrives on respect for learning as an entryway into this ordered world. Indeed, the periods at the end of each word--as in "Ants"--suggest a sense of finality, as if no further probing is necessary, for there is nothing to be found beyond or behind the frame that cannot be seen and understood; nothing that might have motivations and an inner life beyond the intellectual mastery of the learner.

Production This book saw many different editions; in fact, WorldCat lists several versions, with different authors and publishers in addition to various years. Thus, in addition to this 1806 version attributed to Alexander Anderson (author) and Samuel Wood (publisher), we also find versions printed by N. Cheever (Hallowell, Maine, 1809); Sidney's Press (New Haven, Connecticut, 1812); and John Carson (Philadelphia, 1823), among others; authors named include Nathaniel Cheever and Increase Cooke, in addition to Anderson. The Young Child's A B C was the first book published by Wood, the second-oldest publishing company in New York, founded in 1804; Wood wrote, illustrated, and hand-colored several books himself (with copper plate engravings), and enlisted Anderson, the "father of American wood engraving", to provide his work in this latter form as well.