Maria Nikolajeva argues that “children’s literature has from the very beginning been related to pedagogics” and that children’s literature has always been considered as “a powerful means for educating children” (Nikolajeva 1996: 3). There are also other characters, such as Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second of the Caliphs under whose reign Islam was taken to faraway countries and the Islamic empire was larger than ever after, and Umar al-Mokhtar, the brave Libyan leader who won many wars against the Italians. Nine biographies tell about Saladdin and his war against the crusaders. Of the publications, 956 (7.75%) are historical fiction and have generally religious or national themes as they tell about outstanding Islamic figures, such as the prophet Muhammad’s companions and the Islam conquest heroes like Khalid ibn al-Walid, Ubeida ibn al-Jarrah, Ali ibn Abi Talib, and many others. In the category of non-fiction, we find other publications about Islam that teach Arab children how ideal Muslims should behave. Other publications relate to other prophets acknowledged by Islam like Moses and Jesus. The figures show that 1,457 publications (11.80%) of the 12,323 books published have explicit religious themes like the prophet Muhammad’s life, tradition, and deeds. Islam as a religion is a major theme in the Arab literature for children.
This made children’s books affordable for a wider readership, even though not always accessible to working class children (see Ellis 1963). Along with the growing number of literate children, market potentials for publishers expanded, while paper prices were going down and binding and printing techniques were developing. All the European countries have in their turn had their industrial revolutions and have gone through almost the same social upheavals and metamorphoses, including education. The proliferation of schools brought along an urgent need for school books and other books for children (see Ellis 1963). Later, Sunday schools were extended into a national day school system in Great Britain. At first Sunday schools were a partial answer to children’s educational needs. “The concentration of working people in the new industrial towns in the early 19th (sic) century made it imperative that if they were not to threaten the security of the Establishment as in France, they must receive some form of education” (ibid. No wonder if the establishment of children’s literature as such coincided with the great impetus child education received in the nineteenth century in the Western world (Ellis 1963: 1). As Peter Hunt points out, childhood was scarcely recognised before the eighteenth century (1994: 27).
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