Josette Frank facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Josette Frank
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A portrait of Frank, year unknown
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| Born | March 27, 1893 |
| Died | September 9, 1989 (aged 96) Alexandria, Virginia
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| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Children's literature advocate and editor |
| Known for | Children's Reading Consultant, Child Study Association of America Namesake of Josette Frank Award |
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Notable work
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What Books For Children? Your Children's Reading Today |
Josette Frank (March 27, 1893 – September 9, 1989) was an American children's literature expert and educational consultant. Frank spent most of her adult life working for the Child Study Association of America (CSAA), a leading authority on child development from the 1920s to the 1960s. Frank was engaged as the CSAA's child reading expert and published a parental literary guide titled What Books For Children? in 1937 with a new edition in 1941. Due to her progressive views about parental supervision of children's reading, Frank became one of the significant pro-comics voices during the American anti-comics movement of the 1950s, for which she received praise and criticism.
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Early life
Frank was born on March 27, 1893, in Manhattan, New York City into a family of secular Jews. Her father, Leo, owned a successful furniture business. As a young girl, she was involved in early feminism and the Women's Land Army. She got her first job when she was 19, working as a secretary for Theodore Roosevelt. She also investigated child labor and worked with poor immigrants in New York's Lower East Side while living in Greenwich Village.
Child Study Association of America
Early years
Frank first became involved with the Federation For Child Study, group that became the CSAA, in 1923. Frank served as an assistant editor for their magazine, Child Study. Her first prominent advocacy for child-guided reading came in 1936, in an issue of Parents Magazine: "We can best guide our children's reading if we let our children's reading guide us instead of trying to mold them into preconceived patterns of 'what the well-read child should read,' let us rather encourage them to find their way to real experiences of their own in the vast world of books."
Reflecting her increasing familiarity with children's literature, CSAA director Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg suggested Frank publish a book recommending children's literature to parents. Frank's book, What Books For Children?, came out first in 1937, and Frank promoted the book at the New York Times National Book Fair, held at Rockefeller Center in November of that year. The fair brought Frank's progressive ideas about oversight of children's reading to a much larger audience, and Frank reassured parents that their children's morals were not shaped to a great amount by reading material. The article was one of the first times Frank also discussed children's readership of comic books, saying:
My little girl, now 12 years old, is reading Van Loon's The Arts, but her favorite reading is the Sunday colored funnies. It seems to me that a child's interest in these 'funnies' has nothing to do with her intelligence quotient. One great reason may be that in the comic strips something is happening very fast and always comes to a dramatic close. i think that children like that swift, sudden action. At any rate the question is not whether children should read the comics, but how are you going to stop them?"
In a response to a letter critical of Frank's liberalized views on children's reading, Frank noted that children could never be wholly protected from forbidden literature by parental oversight alone, saying "...we know that prohibiting has ever had the effect of enhancing the allure of the forbidden."
Comics advocacy
After Chicago Daily News writer Sterling North condemned comic books as "graphic insanity" in one of his columns, comic book companies rushed to save their image and prove that they were not as harmful as North made them out to be. National Comics Publications managing editor Whitney Ellsworth sent out a memo to his staff that advised writers and artists to confine their contributions to material that is completely above any possible criticism.
In 1941, she joined National's editorial advisory board in a part-time position. Her name, along with the rest of the board, was published in every National comic book starting in mid-1941. Members were paid regardless of their input, and they were usually sent sample story outlines to review rather than finished comic books.
In the new chapter on comic books published in Frank's 1941 2nd edition of What Books For Children?, Frank became more candid about her comic book advocacy, posing a question towards understanding children's interest in comics.
By 1950, reading comics books was widely considered to be harmful to children. Hilde Mosse, the acting physician in charge of the Lafargue Clinic, used Frank's position on the advisory board to discredit her pro-comic writings published in the Journal of Educational Sociology at a 1950 symposium on comics held at a New York school.'' In 1954, the Senate held hearings to investigate a link between comic books and juvenile delinquency. During the proceedings, Estes Kefauver grilled Child Study Association of America president Gunnar Dybwad over Frank's links to the comic book industry, suggesting as Mosse did earlier that her writing was not credible due to her professional affiliations (receiving pay from the industry).
Personal life and death
Frank married Henry Jacobs in 1923 but kept her maiden name, which was a rare decision at the time. Frank refused to open mail addressed to her using her husband's name, and would return unopened letters saying that no person with that name lived there. Her husband died in 1941. They had two children, a daughter named Judith and a son named Stephen. In addition to her work with the CSAA, she also served on committees for the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the National Committee for Program Services of the Campfire Girls.
Frank died of pneumonia on September 9, 1989, in a nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia.
Legacy
As part of the CSAA, Frank was the first editor of the Children's Book Committee at the Bank Street College of Education and had helped choose the recipient of the annual Children's Book Award for children's fiction since its inception in 1944. In 1997, the award was renamed in her honor.
See also
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
