Written and illustrated by German painter and poet, Wilhelm Busch, Max und Moritz (1865) is a children's story written in doggerel verse and illustrated in a comic-like style about two unscrupulous boys who taunt adults with their… [more]

Krishna is known in the stories of the Bhagavata-Purana as the 8th incarnation of the god Vishnu, destined to perform great deeds and remove the evils of the world. Shown in this Indian miniature watercolor painting as a child with grey-blue skin,… [more]

Published around 1853, Little Eva, The Flower of the South is an anonymously written children's story based on Eva, the enormously popular character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Aiming… [more]

This oil on canvas painting by an unknown American folk artist was painted around 1840. It depicts two siblings at play. While their mother is absent from the picture, she presided over the "private sphere" of the home as prescribed by the… [more]

During the modern Imperial period (1868-1945), daughters of poor Japanese families worked as komori taking care of their own siblings or working as indentured servants for other poor families. The state's efforts to foster Japanese… [more]

Lydia Maria Child included this selection on how to jump rope in The Girls Own Book, a book published in 1833. Why did girls in early 19th-century America need instructions on how to jump rope? Why did Child's feel the need to caution… [more]

Pocahontas, a legendary figure in American history, was the daughter of a powerful 17th-century Powhatan chief. Allegedly seeking retribution for the murder of two tribesmen by the English, Powhatans captured John Smith, one of the founders of… [more]

Strongly influencing the invention of Robert J. Clay's mechanized "Creeping Baby Doll" in 1871, were changing notions of childhood that fostered children's development.

Allowing babies to crawl on all fours as did Clay's doll reflected… [more]

Mary Green of Worcester, MA, created this embroidery in 1804 at the age of 16. She based it on the 1796 engraving, "Liberty in the Form of the Goddess of Youth Giving Support to the Bald Eagle," by artist-entrepreneur, Edward Savage.

"Italian Mother and Baby" appeared in Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890). This image captures the misery of urban poverty as well as the tenacity of life. It is infused with unmistakable… [more]