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Approximately what percentage of American adolescents were enrolled in high school in 1900?
10%
25%
50%
75%

Which famous heroine of a children’s book was denounced by reviewers as a piece of “totally antisocial rubbish” whose unpleasant demeanor “scratches the soul”?
Mary Lennox
Harriet the Spy
Pippi Longstocking
Hermione Granger

In Emile (1762), Rousseau describes in detail a system of raising children within a carefully controlled setting that he felt was in keeping with the dictates of nature. According to his autobiography, how did he raise his own children?
Exactly according to the system described in Emile, until they revolted as teenagers and refused to co-operate any longer.
Rousseau followed the system described by Richard and Maria Edgeworth in their influential treatise Practical Education (1798), which encouraged parents to treat children as fully rational subjects.
Despite his insistence on the importance of a male tutor in Emile, Rousseau left the child-rearing entirely to his wife.
Rousseau abandoned his children, who were then raised in a foundling asylum.

Munro Leaf’s picture book The Story of Ferdinand (1936) chronicles of a Spanish bull who prefers to sit under a cork tree and smell the flowers rather than enter the violent world of the bullfighting ring. Which of the following is NOT true about this famous book?
It outsold Gone with the Wind as the #1 bestseller in America in 1938.
It led to the organization of an international movement to ban bullfighting in Spain.
It was banned in Spain because it was published during the Spanish civil war.
Adolf Hitler ordered it to be burned as “degenerate democratic propaganda”

In Mary Martha Sherwood’s immensely popular children’s novel The History of the Fairchild Family (1818), what punishment do the little Fairchild siblings receive for the crime of quarrelling with each other?
They are lectured by their parents and sent to bed without any supper.
They are separated from each other for a week to experience how lonely it is to be an only child.
While they argue, they ignore the fire that their parents told them to watch, and end up getting badly burnt.
They are forced to view a rotting corpse on a gibbet.

Although he wrote the groundbreaking book Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1960), Philippe Ariès was not a professional historian. What was he?
A circus acrobat
A tropical fruit expert
A taxi driver
A poet


What percentage the English population was under the age of 15 in the year 1550?
20%
30%
40%
50%

In 1860, Milton Bradley made his fortune on this famous board game, which originated in London in 1790. What was it?
Monopoly
The Checkered Game of Life
Snakes and Ladders
The Sublime Game of Go

What was Milton Bradley famous for before becoming a game-maker?
Writing children's books like "A Boy's Life"
Inventing the Slinky
Serving as a solicitor for a serial killer
Creating a lithograph portrait of Abraham Lincoln

In the 1980s, an academic panel created a list of distinguished children's books which they called "Touchstones," meaning that each one made "a substantial or unique contribution to children's literature." Which of the following was NOT on the list?
PETER PAN by J.M. Barrie
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame
THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD by Howard Pyle
HARRIET THE SPY by Louise Fitzhugh