Article: The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and American.

John Goldthwaite. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. ix + 386 pp. $30.00.

For Goldthwaite Make-Believe, children's literature, beginning with Proverbs ("the world's oldest surviving children's book" [4]), is primarily a teaching device, a way of preparing children for their entrance into adult society. The same homilies and instructions appear again and again in the nursery rhymes, fairy tales, beast fables, and their descendant the picture book that compose the genre. Through a combination of sentimentality and realism such stories are both entertaining and didactic.

Nursery rhymes, though frequently nonsense, are also means of casting light on that deeper ...

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