The book list of Isaiah Thomas (1749–1831), the Worcester, Massachusetts printer, shows how freely he drew from the London bookseller. Called by many the Didot of America, founder of the American Antiquarian Society, author of one of the most authentic histories of early printing in this country, he is the pioneer of children’s books for America. He scattered his presses and stores over a region embracing Worcester and Boston, Mass.; Concord, N. H.; Baltimore, Md.; and Albany, N. Y. Books were kept by him, so he vouched, specially for the instruction and amusement of children, to make them safe and happy. In his “Memoirs” there is found abundant material to satisfy one as to the nature of reading for young folks in New England, previous to the Revolution. Emerson writes in his “Spiritual Laws” regarding “theological problems”; he calls them “the soul’s mumps and measles and whooping-cough.” Already the sombre sternness of Colonial literature for children has been typified in the “New England Primer.” The benefits of divine songs and praises; the reiteration of the joy to parents, consequent upon the behaviour of godly children; the mandates, the terrible finger of retribution, the warning to all sinners lurking in the throat disease which was prevalent at one time--all these ogres rise up in the Thomas book to crush juvenile exuberance. Does it take much description to get at the miserable heart of the early piety displayed by the heroines of Cotton Mather’s volumes, those stone images of unthinkable children who passed away early, who were reclaimed from disobedience, “children in whom the fear of God was remarkably budding before they died”? Writers never fail to say, in speaking of Thomas White’s “Little Book for Children” (reprint of 1702), that its immortality, in the face of all its theology, is centred in one famous untheological line, “A was an archer who shot at a frog.” What Thomas did, when he began taking from Newbery, was to change colloquial English terms to fit new environment; the coach no longer belongs to the Lord Mayor, but to the Governor instead.[29] The text is only slightly altered. We recognise the same little boys who would become great masters; the same ear-marks stigmatise the heroines of “The Juvenile Biographer,” insufferable apostles of surname-meaning, Mistresses Allgood, Careful, and Lovebook, together with Mr. Badenough. Oh, Betsey and Nancy and Amelia and Billy, did you know what it was to romp and play?