"Books That Civilize as Well as Satisfy": Surveying Children's Reading Habits in 1940s and 1950s Australia and New Zealand

Surveys have often been used to find out what children were reading in any given time period. This article examines a range of surveys taken over the 1940s and 1950s in Australia and New Zealand, focusing on W. J. Scott's 1947 survey of New Zealand children's reading habits, and Connell, Francis, and Skilbeck's account of Australian adolescents' reading habits published in 1957. Rather than focusing on the results of the surveys themselves, however, this article will address the concerns of those conducting the surveys – namely that readership of inappropriate books and pernicious comics would degrade children's intelligence and morals. These concerns are vitally present in the analysis of the results that they publish. While historians of reading have all made important contributions to their field through their use of historical reading surveys, few historians have sought to focus on the motivations and concerns of adults in conducting such surveys. This article will show that the analysis of the results recorded in these surveys are just as worthy of examination as the results themselves.