Reading is a great habit to possess, especially for children. There is a reason why books are known to be your best friend. It helps to build your confidence, develop your vocabulary, improve your language skills, and also perks up the mood. Selecting the right book is equally important. With the increasing internet usage, everyone wants to digitize the books to read their favorite book whenever and wherever they want.
Historical Children’s Literature and Books
While there are many different websites offering free eBooks, the Baldwin Library at UF Digital Collection offers a huge collection of over 6,000 historical books of all genres and types, all digitized and free to read. You will get almost every old book of various genres that flourished back then. Be it mythological and religious books, fairy tales, adventure stories, codes of conduct or other language books.
The huge collection of great books will help your children learn about the religious, civic, and moral values, the literary format and style of the Victorian era, the way books were designed in that era, and the historical and vintage arts of illustration. Ruth Baldwin has researched and developed this huge collection after 40 years of his efforts.
The entire library is very well categorized based on languages, genres, publication date, publisher, geographical area, and topic. It is very easy to go through the huge collection of 6000 books and see which book interests you or your children. Plus, there is also the search option enabled here, so you can also search for your favorite book directly.
Back in the 18th century, children’s books were hardly published, and as per the research, by the end of the 18th century, children’s literature started booming as an independent part of the publishing industry in Britain, and it soon gained huge popularity. The Baldwin Library brings a vast collection of books published in the United States and Britain at the end of the 18th century, so you can now learn what the US and Britain wanted their children to learn back then.
For example, the book A. Apple Pie shows how they used to teach alphabet in the form of a beautiful story. The book has a story with illustrative pictures to make it easy for the kids to understand and learn.
Besides the books of various genres and categories, this library also offers many books in both their American and English edition, which is a rare thing any library would provide. Some of the classics in Baldwin’s collection include books like Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables and many more. There are also many famous fables, early chapbooks, alphabet books, biographies, history, science, and natural books, etc. The huge collection also includes some annual children’s magazines.
In a nutshell, the UF Digital Collection is a rich source for children interested in history, philosophy, mythology, science, and literature – so if you want your children to know about the books in that era, head over to ufl.edu and enjoy.
