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Period: 850 BCE to 8 BCE
Earliest Literature
Stories such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, Aesop's Fables, and Metamorphoses tell the stories of Roman and Greek mythology and talking animals. -
Period: 900 to 1400
The Middle Ages
Biblical stories and medieval tales such as Beowulf that upheld the Roman Catholic Church -
Period: 1400 to
The Renassiance
Schoolbooks such as the New England Primer and the Orbis Sensualium Pictus and books for pleasure with a moral purpose such as the Pilgrims Process and Gulliver's Travels. -
Period: to
Eighteenth-Century Morality
Essays such as Thoughts Concerning Education and books such as Emile, Simple Susan, and the History of the Fairchild Family that all discussed morality and ideal education. -
Period: to
Rise of Folktales
Folktales from the Tales of Mother Goose, the Tales from Arabian Nights, and Grimms' Fairy Tales began to be told as nursery rhymes and stories told to children. -
Period: to
Victorian Golden Age
Stories such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, A Book of Nonsense, Little Women, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Rabbit pioneered modern children's literature. -
Period: to
Early Twentieth Century
Books such as Peter Pan, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Secret Garden, Mary Poppins, and the Hobbit showed realistic stories becoming more popular, as well as fantasy stories beginning to stray from the norms of the genre. -
Period: to
Late Twentieth Century
Books such as The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, the Chronicles of Narnia, Charlotte's Web, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Catcher in the Rye, and anything Dr. Seuss began gaining children's literature many awards and experimented with the traditional structure of children's literature.