In this collection of fourteen essays, Anne Scott MacLeod locates and describes shifts in the American concept of childhood as those changes are suggested in nearly two centuries of children's stories. A social historian and literary critic of genuine insight, MacLeod has helped to pioneer an approach to American culture through the children's literature that arises from it: "When I read books written for children," MacLeod comments in her preface, "I look for author's views, certainly, but I also try to discover what the culture is saying about itself, about the present and the future, and about the nature and purposes of childhood....Children's books don't mirror their culture, but they do always, no matter how indirectly, convey some of its central truths."