Week of August 26, 2012—A Canon of
Picture Books
Tuesday, August 28—Discovering Books
that Shaped America
A
current exhibition at the Library of Congress (and online) features “Books that
Shaped America.” The list includes familiar titles and ones that are lesser
known, fiction and non-fiction, adult literature and children’s literature. “This
list is a starting point,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “It
is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that
description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on
books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear
on this initial list or not.”
Don’t
you love the idea of “a national conversation on books?” Perhaps we could call
this list from the Library of Congress a canon of American literature. What I wish had been included in the
exhibition and the many articles about it is the criterion for selecting the
books. Of course, the criterion itself might spark another national conversation!
Below
is the Library of Congress’ “canon” of books that shaped American. Picture
books are highlighted in red, and other children’s books are highlighted in
blue.
Atlas
Shrugged, Ayn Rand
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Bury My Heart
at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
The Call of
the Wild, Jack London
The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher
in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
The Common
Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, Benjamin Spock
Cosmos, Carl Sagan
A Curious
Hieroglyphick Bible, Anonymous
The Double
Helix, James D. Watson
The Education
of Henry Adams, Henry
Adams
Experiments
and Observations on Electricity, Benjamin Franklin
Fahrenheit
451, Ray Bradbury
Family
Limitation, Margaret
Sanger
The
Federalist, Anonymous
The Feminine
Mystique, Betty Friedan
The Fire Next
Time, James Baldwin
For Whom the
Bell Tolls, Ernest
Hemingway
Gone With the
Wind, Margaret Mitchell
A Grammatical
Institute of the English Language, Noah Webster
The Grapes of
Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Great
Gatsby, F. Scott
Fitzgerald
Harriet, the
Moses of Her People, Sarah
H. Bradford
The History
of Standard Oil, Ida
Tarbell
How the Other
Half Lives, Jacob Riis
How to Win
Friends and Influence People,
Dale Carnegie
Howl, Allen Ginsberg
The Iceman
Cometh, Eugene O’Neill
Idaho: A
Guide in Word and Pictures,
Federal Writers’ Project
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Joy of
Cooking, Irma Rombauer
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
Leaves of
Grass, Walt Whitman
The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow, Washington
Irving
Little Women, or
Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy,
Louisa May Alcott
Mark, the Match
Boy, Horatio Alger Jr.
McGuffey's
Newly Revised Eclectic Primer,
William Holmes McGuffey
Moby-Dick; or
The Whale, Herman Melville
The Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
Native Son, Richard Wright
New England
Primer, Anonymous
New Hampshire, Robert Frost
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Our Bodies,
Ourselves, Boston Women’s
Health Book Collective
Our Town: A
Play, Thornton Wilder
Peter Parley's
Universal History, Samuel
Goodrich
Poems, Emily Dickinson
Poor Richard
Improved and The Way to Wealth, Benjamin Franklin
Pragmatism, William James
The Red Badge
of Courage, Stephen Crane
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
Riders of the
Purple Sage, Zane Grey
The Scarlet
Letter, Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male,
Alfred C. Kinsey
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
The Souls of
Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
The Sound and
the Fury, William Faulkner
Spring and
All, William Carlos
Williams
Stranger in a
Strange Land, Stranger in a
Strange Land, Robert A.
Heinlein
A Street in
Bronzeville, Gwendolyn
Brooks
A Streetcar
Named Desire, Tennessee
Williams
A Survey of
the Roads of the United States of America, Christopher Colles
Their Eyes
Were Watching God, Zora
Neale Hurston
To Kill a
Mockingbird, Harper Lee
A Treasury of
American Folklore, Benjamin
A. Botkin
A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Uncle Tom's
Cabin, Harriet Beecher
Stowe
Unsafe at Any
Speed, Ralph Nader
Walden; or
Life in the Woods, Henry
David Thoreau
The Weary
Blues, Langston Hughes
The Words of
Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez
For you (and me) to do:
RStart reading through the list!
RSee what criterion we can ascertain by looking at the children’s books on the list.
RVisit the Library of Congress' online exhibit at http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/books-that-shaped-america/Pages/SlObjectList.aspx
RSee what criterion we can ascertain by looking at the children’s books on the list.
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