cover image Small Worlds

Small Worlds

. University Press of Kansas, $29.95 (403pp) ISBN 978-0-7006-0510-1

West ( Growing Up with the Country ) and Petrik ( No Step Backward ) have compiled an enjoyable guide to a century of American childhood that is admirably free of academic jargon. However, the collection is still adult-erated: The writers, primarily historians, see through grown-up eyes; even the oral histories are adults recounting their childhoods. Nevertheless, many of these essays, such as Bernard Mergen's study of the meanings children assign to toys, evince superb scholarship while invoking childhood's cherished memories and warm feelings. Others, such as West's exploration of the distinctive traits that emerged in children on the Great Plains, Selma Berrol's look at immigrant children's scholastic experiences and Lester Alston's essay on the acculturation of slave children, demonstrate that there was no one American childhood experience. Some pieces fall short, however. Beyond Alston's contribution, the section on familial relationships yields little insight, and Ruth M. Alexander's study of 22 young women whose rebellions landed them in reformatories deals only with a tiny subset of American children. Photos not seen by PW. (July)