Abstract :
From the early 1940s until the late 1960s, Lois Lenski embarked on an
exploration of American regions through children’s books. This body of work,
which has become known as Lenski’s Regional Series, began by exploring the
regions Lenski herself experienced each year as she traveled from Connecticut to
Florida for her health. As Lenski realized the importance and success of these
books, demonstrated by a Newberry Medal award for Strawberry Girl in 1946, she
broadened her reach to include more geographical areas of the United States
including such states as California and South Dakota. Through her books, Lenski
emphasizes the importance of community and shared nationhood even across
regional lines. This paper examines Lenski’s regional series first from her own
purpose in aiming for objectivity and fact that she could communicate to children of
other regions, instructing and exposing them to new ways of life. Second, this paper
considers the paratextual elements of the Regional series, the forewords and the
maps that accompany each book, to reveal the ideology that Lenski unconsciously
incorporates into her stories. A product of her time, Lenski may have been influenced
by the government’s American Guide Series, created by the Federal Writers’
Project, which demonstrates the same successes and flaws. Lenski’s maps in particular
demonstrate the influence of a particular time, the layering of fact and fiction,
and the reflection of Lenski’s personal values of certain regional characteristics.
Recognition of the ideology incorporated into Lenski’s series remains important as
child readers receive not objective fact, but one perspective of their nation.
