The History of Children’s Literature
EDP1: Task 1
Janet Blake
Western Governors University

Children’s literature is defined many different ways. It can be simply defined as a book that a child reads, or as Kiefer defined it “as the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the forms and structures of language.” (Kiefer, 2010, p.5) Literature has been around for hundreds of years, although not in the form that we are used to seeing now. There have always been stories to be told for as long as one can remember.
Before the days of bound books and magazines, there were stories that were told by people in the village around the campfires, or the bards and traveling entertainers telling stories to the court in the castles. This form of literature is labeled as oral literature. Oral literature has been around as long as there has been a language to speak. It is the stories that have been passed on from generation to generation. These stories included folklore, fables, stories about animals, or stories about brave heroes who performed a majestic deed to win the hand of his true love. They were told to both children and adults alike, because children and adults were all treated similarly during this time. In the early years of the fifth century through the fifteenth century this was the avenue for entertainment and to teach many of the lessons that they needed. Children would listen to the stories that the adults would listen to. These stories were often kept or preserved by the means of carving them into the wall of a cave, or putting them onto clay tablets, (Kiefer, 2010, p.65) Kiefer explains that some of the earliest noted types of books were Bible picture books. These books were some of the first books that children may have read. Another early book is from the Twelfth Century, called the Elucidation. This was a book very similar to what we would have as