Description
Book SynopsisExamines the place of Disney in the changing construction of childhood in mid-twentieth-century America
Trade Review“
Babes in Tomorrowland is a phenomenally accomplished work. The coverage is encyclopedic, the argument masterful, and the prose consistently accessible and engaging. The amount of research is nothing short of monumental. There is no question that the book will make a significant impact on anyone working on contemporary children’s culture.”—Henry Jenkins, editor of
The Children’s Culture Reader“
Babes in Tomorrowland is an impressive work that meticulously documents historically shifting conceptions of the American child. This finely researched book will make a valuable contribution to our understanding of how children serve grown-up needs as adults strive to craft a better child to ensure a better tomorrow.”—Heather Hendershot, editor of
Nickelodeon Nation: The History, Politics, and Economics of America’s Only TV Channel for Kids“
Babes in Tomorrowland provides an engaging, scholarly account of how watching Beaver Valley and going to Disneyland became central to the socialization of modern American children and the national future.”
-- Erika Doss * Journal of American History *
“For those interested in a broad and soundly theoretical discussion of our changing social conceptions of childhood, and the economic and social sources of those conceptions, this book makes for valuable reading. . . . [A] vivid, extremely detailed history of child rearing in the early twentieth century, and a media company that blossomed alongside it.” -- Chris McGee * The Lion and the Unicorn *
“Marvelously rich in source material and thoughtful in approach, Nicholas Sammond’s
Babes in Tomorrowland is a history of American child-rearing practices in the mid-twentieth century. . . . [It] will be engaging reading for all interested in American childhood studies.” -- Martha Hixon * Children's Literature *
“With
Babes in Tomorrowland, Nicholas Sammond offers a fine genealogy of Disney (the man and the industry), middle-class tastes and the intellectual and market regulation of ‘the good child’ from the Great Depression to the early 1960s. Sammond draws upon a staggering wealth of primary and secondary sources to make an impressive case about how the rise of Walt Disney was closely tied to the rise of child development theory, media standards and anxiety over childhood.” -- Randal Doane * Journal of Consumer Culture *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Child 1
1. Disney Makes Disney 25
2. Making a Manageable Child 81
3. In Middletown 135
4. America’s True-Life Adventure 195
5. Raising the Natural Child 247
6. Disney Maps the Frontier 300
Conclusion: The Child as Victim of Commodities 357
Notes 387
References 427
Filmography 453
Index 455
