Turn the Leaves and Use Them Well

Material understandings of books were entrenched in young readers, and this very issue of materiality resulted in what Grenby describes as an “ongoing, attritional war” between children and the adults who governed their reading. In a theoretical assessment that echoes Grenby’s carefully historicized account of children’s reading, Petrucci characterizes the practices of young readers in terms of “a physical relationship with the book that is much more intense and direct than in traditional modes of reading. No such statement exists, however, in The Nursery “Alice”; by 1890, illustrated books are simply the correct reading material, the default answer to the question of what a child should read.

Source: www.laphamsquarterly.org