Explaining the World to Children

In his classic work "The Republic" Plato (427-347 B.C.

) claimed that children should have access to suitable literature.

Now this claim has grown into something like a world wide wish for good and entertaining literature for children. However, there has always been some genres which almost seem to have been cut out to children, but which originally have been used by grown-ups. That goes for instance for the fable where one of the main characteristics is the clearly didactic use of the translation of human life into the animal world.
Masters of this genre like e.g. Aisophos (circa 550 B.C)., Phaedrus (circa 50 B.C.-50 A.
D.

) and La Fontaine (1621-1695) used the animal world to point out their opinions about their own human one.
However, their writings were not specifically for children.
On the contrary, these fables were written for grown-ups, and not until later were they seen as children's literature.
Actually, that has been the most common development when it comes to children's literature.
Classic works for grown-ups have turned into children's literature like in the case of e.
g.
"Arabian Nights" and books by Daniel Defoe, Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, etc, etc. It is the grown-ups who write the books for children and they have been conditioned by their own upbringing into feeling this special obligation of making them didactic.
After all children are to be socialized and become new and useful members of society so it is paramount to grown-ups that they adhere to their rules.

In the Ages of the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment many didactic books for children were published with the specific purpose of teaching them about religion and the moral values of their society. A special kind of children's literature is the one with pictures.

The very first one of these illustrated books for children was "Orbis Pictus" (1658) by the Czech Educational Reformer Comenius (1592-1610).
It was a textbook for teaching the young how to behave and what to expect of the world.

Much later the book with pictures developed into e.

g.
pop-up books which have been very popular with the very young children and presumably their parents too.

There are lots of more or less rebellious child-characters in children's books, but they always end up more or less giving in to the rules of society.
For a child character to stay rebellious, free and with a will of his or her own the didactic perspective must be subdued or even abandoned.
We don't meet that way of thinking in children's books until the last part of the 19th century.

Now the books for children are not strictly didactic or moral like before. One example of a modern book for children which is for entertainment and not only morals is the series of books by the Danish writer Trine Sondergaard about our Prince Christian, the 6 year old son of the Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark.
This charming child will eventually become the king of Denmark if we keep the monarchy. In the three books about the fantastic, but fictive world of Prince Christian he is depicted as a very active and nosy boy.

Trine Sondergaard also allots him the ability to fly, using bubbles of snot as fuel.

It's quite crazy as the prince is a normal boy who walks on his two legs, but it is also funny, and within this genre it is accepted.
Besides it is an acceptable literary trick to give the character of Christian the opportunity of doing what he is supposed to want to do as a boy. As Trine Sondergaard is a fan of the German writer Sebastian Meschenmoser it is not surprising to see that she is not afraid of letting her imagination take her wherever it leads. Prince Christian really gets around which also is depicted in charming illustrations.

The future will be e-books and iPads for children. Here the stories may develop in all directions with all kinds of possibilities for interactiveness.
The didactic perspective which used to be so important may be renewed - or placed on a retired list as obsolete in a world which now prefers entertainment to moral fables.
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