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Written and illustrated by German painter and poet, Wilhelm Busch, Max und Moritz (1865) is a children's story written in doggerel verse and illustrated in a comic-like style about two unscrupulous boys who taunt adults with their sadistic pranks.… [more]

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Published around 1853, Little Eva, The Flower of the South is an anonymously written children's story based on Eva, the enormously popular character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Aiming to thwart the spread… [more]

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This watercolor (fig. 1) of a mother carrying her baby was painted c. 1585 by John White who explored the mid-Atlantic region with other Englishmen including Thomas Hariot. Hariot's A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia published… [more]

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This short story by fiction writer, S.L. Wisenberg, sheds light on the influence of Anne Frank on the imagination and identity of Jewish girls growing up in postwar America. Written from a child's point of view and in the language of children,… [more]

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In 1928, Martha Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, an anthropological work based on field work she had conducted on female adolescents in Samoa. In Mead's book that became a best seller and unleashed a storm of controversy, she argued that it was… [more]

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Published in 1858, Der Struwwelpeter (Shaggy Peter) is a German children's book first published anonymously under a different title in 1845 by Heinrich Hoffman. Hoffman, a Frankfurt physician and father, wrote the book after realizing that there were… [more]

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Autobiographical writing as a rich source for the exploration of European childhood and youth is self evident; in many cases, it is one of the most nuanced ways to understand historical actors' earliest experiences. Such is the case in Russia, where… [more]

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Rebecca Friedman

This Teaching Case Study explores My Past and Thoughts, written by Alexander Herzen (the first self-proclaimed Russian socialist), which is part of a larger genre of writing on childhood and youth in the middle of 19th-century Russia. echo [more]

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The quotations below relate normative examples of parents' behavior upon the death of a child. In the first hadith, or narrative from the life of Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, Aisha, wife of Muhammad, asks about the salvation of those who have suffered… [more]

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The hadith, or narrated report, reflects the Islamic custom of sacrificing a sheep upon the birth of a child, sharing the meat with extended family members, and donating some of it as charity (sadaqa). This practice of the people of Madinah mentioned… [more]