In the 19th century, it was incredibly dangerous to be a child. As of 1900, about 18 percent, or nearly one in five, American children died before their fifth birthday.The most common causes were ...

“It is a fallacy to think we protect children from the world around them,” Todd Brewster writes in AMERICAN CHILDHOOD: A Photographic History (Scribner, $36).

Our history of childhood adversity determines our biological set point for how able we are to regulate ourselves and calm our emotions—and calm and connect with those around us. Including our kids.

Children’s literature, to its immense benefit, went down the rabbit hole with Alice, underwater with Charles Kingsley’s Tom, and off to find colourful jeopardy with Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island.