by Andrew Hockenbroch

Created on: March 20, 2010   Last Updated: March 21, 2010

If a modern children’s author wrote filth, like the short stories once repeated to small children, schools would ban their books from their libraries and parents would panic, fearful that they will make their children violent heathens. In our modern culture, older children’s literature does appear fairly benign, but a little timely cultural context reveals the gory truth.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary was about Mary Tudor, also known as Bloody Mary. This simple rhyme is filled with symbolism that someone who lived at the time would have understood. Mary’s garden would have been graveyards filled with the protestants she would not tolerate. How does her garden grow? With (silver) thumbscrew which were used to crush the thumb, cockleshells, which are believed to have been a more creative torture instrument, and with maidens all in a row. Maiden was the name used for the guillotine at the time. Mary is also responsible for Three Blind Mice.

Ring Around the Rosy is often attributed to the bubonic plague. The first line describes a symptom, a redness of the cheeks. The second line describes a method that was believed to fight the plague, carrying a small pouch of sweet smelling plants. Finally, the remainder of the rhyme speaks of death and cremation.

Jack and Jill first appears in 1795, shortly after the beheadings of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The ending has been altered to make it somewhat more appropriate for children, but originally Jack, who broke his crown, was Louis XVI and Jill was Marie Antoinette who came tumbling shortly after.

Many old rhymes have similar meanings behind them. Compare these to some of the more modern popular children’s literature.

Jan Brett has written several books currently used in classrooms with younger children. With a little variance they follow one simple formula: Someone loses a small object, an impossibly large bunch of animals squeeze into the small object, and after a little fun the animals all leave before the object is found by its owner who then wonders why something is different about it.

Dr. Seuss includes the occasional tweedle beetle paddle battle in his works, but what little violence there is in his writing is entirely and clearly nonsense, except the part about boiling whos in beezlenut oil, but then the antagonists in that story do not believe there are any whos and relent as soon as they find out there really are. In any case, there are no beheadings of rulers or diseases that wipe out sixty percent of a population.

While there does appear to be a trend in our society to make more violence more accessible to younger children, books and literature are generally an exception. We have progressed from the most violent of symbolism to fluffy animals.

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