Concept of Childhood in Children's Literature
Believe it or not, we didn't always make a distinction between children and adults. The idea that children were a separate category of people from adults only began to emerge during the 18th century Enlightenment, when philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke made the argument that those itty-bitty people walking around were very different from us fully grown folk.
It was then that "childhood" came to be defined as a unique period in the development of a person, and "children" were, for the first time, talked about as a separate category of people. Then, of course, the Children's Rights Movement came along and reinforced this new idea that children aren't mini-adults walking around…even if they do act like it sometimes.
Chew on This
The transition from childhood to adulthood is a big theme in the Grimms' Fairytales. Delve into an analysis of this theme here.
Roald Dahl uses the point of view of a child to transport his readers into childhood in The Witches. Check out an analysis of the book's first-person point of view.