Are Sunday School prize books still widely given? The church we went to in
England didn't have Sunday School as such, just family services with a
creche for very small children, and I think this was the case with other
local churches too.
Religious and moralistic stories for children were published in Sweden in the 20th C, mainly by publishers associated with independent churches, and I believe some of them are still published. I have a few of them, including Salvation Army annuals - collecting more or less all Swedish children's books pre-1960 - They are evidently less heavy than the American Victorian. Many Victorian/early 20th C religious tracts were translated, but not Elsie.
The Church of Sweden Sunday school magazines in the 1950s had quite nice moralistic stories, though I unfortunately gave away all my childhood magazines a few years later - keeping all the books - They were probably very mild in their kind, not different from those in the girls' annuals. We didn't get books for Sunday School prizes, only one page of a story to glue into a little book each week, or just pictures. I still have those; one is about two Indian children coming to a missionary hospital, the girl going to train as a nurse. They also met an - obviously Swedish - engineer working with the project of drilling wells in villages.
Our teacher in the early school used to read from Arthur Marshall's collections of moralistic 'sunshine' stories, and I loved them, found one of them in a charity shop this year.
Eva Margareta,
who hasn't really time for writing this, having been asked to work today when I intended staying home to finish my Sweet Violet paper, so, please, don't expect too much from me tomorrow. I'll have to finish and post it from work tomorrow, in an interval between catalogueing new books and lending others to students;-)
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