Children’s Book Illustration of Chinese Peddler

Writing under the pseudonym Peter Parley, Samuel Griswold Goodrich penned a series of popular children’s textbooks that educated America’s youth about places and cultures around the world. Peter Parley’s Method of Telling About Geography for Children (1830) included a woodcut print of a Chinese man peddling rats, with the caption, “Chinese selling Rats and Puppies for pies.” In The Second Book of History (1832), Goodrich added an overly simple explanation: “In many parts China is so thickly settled, that nothing which will support life is thrown away.” Teaching school-age children that Chinese commonly ate rats, these textbooks influenced readers’ attitudes toward Chinese food.

Source: Samuel Goodrich, Peter Parley’s Method of Telling About Geography to Children (Hartford: H. and F. J. Huntington, 1830), p. 74, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31822031034416?urlappend=%3Bseq=96%3Bownerid=13510798901661417-110.