Sometimes we echoed in Babies and more from various periodicals for children, but certainly nothing to do with the beginnings of the children's press that we can see in the blog of the National Library of Spain.
A historical and very curious tour that takes us to know some old publications for children, when color or drawings were not everything. Some magazines that, sure, today would throw back our children (and ourselves), and that time does not pass in vain.
For example, the first periodical publication designed for children It is titled "La Gazeta de los Niños", from the end of the 18th century, which lacked illustrations and whose purpose was markedly educational.
During the nineteenth century various works with this theme emerge, reaching more than sixty different publications. For the first time, the child will be considered a regular reader with their own interests. The pages of these publications were offered as new support for stories, poetry and theatrical compositions.
Also included hobbies and games, and later the illustrations were introduced to support the texts, which would gradually become prominent when the first "comics" or pages with cartoons emerged, around 1870.
The funny thing is that the evolution of the press has been similar for children and adults, and what they have in common, at all times, is that they seek to entertain and instruct. Although the instruction seems to me to be lost a lot in some examples of current magazines, especially those aimed at preteens and adolescents.
Some of the children's magazines are digitized and we can consult them on-line, the amount of text and the few illustrations are surprising, as well as the predominance of historical, biblical and religious themes in general. Visually, of course, they were not the most attractive ...
Anyway, it is very interesting to take a look at this tour of children's magazines from its origins to realize that children's entertainment has also evolved greatly in its print version.
