| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Claudia Nelson. Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850–1929. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2003. Pp. 212. $34.95.
With this book, Claudia Nelson has added significantly to the growing scholarship concerning the history of children. Her focus is not on children themselves, however, but "on the rhetorical purposes" by which adults have used them in behalf of larger social agendas. By interpreting "representations of adoption and foster care in writings produced between 1850 and 1929" (p. 2), Nelson provides a notable reminder that changing and competing adult needs have shaped policies and perceptions regarding dependent children in foster care, institutions, and adoptive families. Her premise is that "each generation—including our own, of course—constructs its vision of the displaced child according to its own principles and needs" (p. 176).	1
Nelson has researched deeply in secondary and primary literature. She moves her narrative chronologically, showing how fiction and nonfiction reflected social and cultural changes that influenced the care of children. She starts with James Whitcomb Riley's 1885 poem, "Little Orphan Annie," and concludes with a discussion of the origins, in the 1920s, of Harold Gray's popular comic strip, Annie. In between, she examines fiction ranging from familiar classics such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World (1850) to lesser-known works such as Annie Fellows Johnston's orphan-train novel, Big Brother (1893). For her nonfiction examples, Nelson examines a variety of child-savers' writings, from Charles Loring Brace's The Dangerous Classes of New York (1872) to turn-of-the-century publications by social service workers and mass-circulation journals.	. . .

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