Librarians have always discussed methods of developing children’s
interest in reading, but they have focused more on the books being
read than on the act of reading. Although many touted the need
to “establish the reading habit,” a closer reading of the literature
reveals that this referred specifically to reading “good books,” those
which socialized children into culturally acceptable sex roles. As early
as 1876, articles warned of the dangers of sensational fiction for both
girls and boys. By the 1940s, comic books had replaced sensational
fiction as a potential “corrupting influence.” Only in the late 1950s
did public librarians begin to address the new problem of a reluctance
to read at all among children in general and among boys in
particular. This paper will examine the effect of gender role expectations
on librarians’ efforts to promote reading to children in the twentieth
century. In particular it will explore the questions of whether
these strategies continue to be designed to promote reading literature
that reinforces society’s gender role expectations and of whether they
are designed to promote reading to both boys and girls equally, or
whether one group is privileged at the expense of the other.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/4588
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