While reading “In the Woods,” “The Truant,” and “The Truant Boy’s End” it became pretty apparent that Abbott wrote these to educate a young reader about right and wrong. He tackles moral concepts like the value of obeying your mother, sharing, honoring obligations, and the value of honesty. That’s quite a few heavy lessons for a story for 5 year old boys  and a story for 12 year old boys.

 

From being around kids both 5 and 12 I feel like “In the Woods” got it’s audience a little bit better than the stories of the Truant Boy. However, definitely they have the spin of what Abbott think 5 year old boy and 12 year old boys would like and what those boys should learn.

 

A quick Google search helped me find a Jacob Abbott site with a brief biography (http://www.jacobabbott.com/bio.html). Turns out he was a minister in addition to a children’s author. Totally get the “preachiness” of the Truant Boy stories now. This minister will show the young boy that a wayward choice will not only eat away at his conscience it will lead to a life of sin and ruin.

 

Here Abbott is using children’s literature as a means to teach morality lessons- pretty common thread throughout the genre. I’m not entirely convinced that Abbott was writing to engage his young reader by entertaining the reader. Rollo was much more entertaining for me.

 

As far as the Truant Boy goes I can’t see the 19th century boy having an epiphany of, “Oh! If I don’t follow the rules and go to school my life will end in ruin and I’ll break my mother’s heart!”

 

Maybe that’s the fault in many children’s stories, from then and now, that rings a little false. The writer is more concerned with the lesson or moral than drawing the reader into a good story.. On the flip side maybe that’s what makes the great children’s stories stand out- they’re great stories that happen to have life lessons.