Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868

How did Ichabod Crane and other characters from children’s literature shape the ideal of American citizenship?

2015 Honor Book Award, Children's Literature Association

From the colonial period to the end of the Civil War, children’s books taught young Americans how to be good citizens and gave them the freedom, autonomy, and possibility to imagine themselves as such, despite the actual limitations of the law concerning child citizenship. Imaginary Citizens argues that the origin and evolution...