Fun and use for children": pictorial ABCs in the Russian educational book publishing of the 19th century

The author examines and analyzes pictorial ABC books, published in Russia in the chronological interval of 1815-1893. This type of edition is described as a special "frontier phenomenon", occupying an intermediate position between the textbook and the toy. A typology of such editions is suggested depending on their content and the structure-functional relationship of the text and the visuals. The following types are distinguished. The "plot type": in such a manual each letter is accompanied by a short text (usually poetic) that begins with this letter and a story illustration, meaningfully and functionally related to the text. A vivid example is Azbuka v stikhakh i kartinkakh. Podarok detyam v pamyat' 1812-go goda [The ABC book in verse and pictures. A gift to children in memory of the year 1812] (1815), well-known as "Terebenev's ABC" (by the name of the author). The manual of this type did not contain any materials for training the sounding, syllabic and / or connected reading. They only helped to learn the letters. Texts and multi-figured illustrations served as a "subject" for educational conversations with the child. The "subject type": in such a manual, as a rule, the "field" of the letter is formed by a word (or several words) starting with the letter; a picture of the object / person / action corresponding to the word; the Church Slavic "name" of the letter and a multi-figure illustration. In the illustration, either one (or main) foreground object is "inscribed" into a relevant landscape, or several objects (and / or people) are meaningfully and visually combined into a group. This edition often had a subtitle: "A Gift", which, on the one hand, emphasized its importance and value for the adult buyer / presenter and the child reader, on the other, "took away" from the boring concept of a "textbook". The "mosaic type": the manual is a "mobile" or "folding" ABC, it contained a sheet with letters repeated several times using different fonts; punctuation marks; figures and several illustrations. It was assumed that the sheet would be cut into individual cards, the child would fold them "like a Chinese puzzle". Although this manual is not very similar to the textbook, the presence of several (many) sets of letters and the opportunity to add, combine, move and expand created a certain interactive "learning space". On the basis of sociocultural, semiotic, linguocultural and didactic analysis, the author comes to a conclusion that pictorial ABCs should be attributed to primers, because they contain: goals and objectives of learning; didactically processed content of human activities experience; a certain organization form of the educational process; an expressed technology and methods of teaching and learning.

Keywords

Authors

References