"Like a Star Through Flying Snow": Jewish Characters, Visible and Invisible

Changing attitudes toward Jews are revealed in the Jewish characters of English-language children's fiction. During the nineteenth century, children encountered Jewish characters mainly in novels written for adults by such authors as William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Walter Scott. As the twentieth century began, ambivalent English attitudes toward Jews were reflected in characters created by Rudyard Kipling and E. Nesbit. From 1910 to 1960, however, the few Jewish characters in English-language children's books were chiefly remarkable for their "invisibility." Most were never unambiguously identified as Jewish, while others were differentiated from non-Jewish characters only by name. Only in the 1970's did a full range of Jewish themes and characters begin to appear.