Chapter 8. Playful reading

Abstract

This chapter concerns the transnational character of children’s literary culture across media and genres in Danish and German homes around 1830. Furthermore, it addresses the interaction between reading and playing in and around books. German author Karl Blumauer’s Der kleine Robert und sein Steckenpferd (Little Robert and his Hobby Horse, 1833, Danish translation 1835) is the prism used to view the interaction between the market for illustrated books in Denmark and Germany; concepts of childhood and literature presented in the German and Danish prefaces; the ludic and media culture represented in texts and images; the traces of use in specific copies, and literary and ludic practices. The chapter concludes that, taken together, such combinations of sources allow a fuller insight into transnational aspects of childhood, children’s expected and actual use of children’s books, toy and media, and the book as a commodity that afforded playful as well as readerly uses.