Books: The Grinch & Co.

It was much easier in 1646. That year saw the printing of the first children's book in America, and a shopping parent could bring home to his child a copy of John Cotton's Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments for their Souls' Nourishment. A question-and-answer catechism, written by the grandfather of Boston's famed hell-fire-and-brimstone Preacher Cotton Mather, Spiritual Milk was designed to edify and scare the daylights out of colonial moppets, e.g.: "Q. What is your corrupt nature? Answ. My corrupt nature is...

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