Empires nursery : childrens literature and the origins of the American century Americas empire was not made by adults only. In fact junior citizens were essential to its creation. Childrens literature during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries sought to impart an imperial consciousness among the nations youth while adult authors strive to raise rising generations of enthusiastic juvenile jingoes. But young people were neither unwitting nor unwilling puppets in the propagation of Americas expansionistic foreign policy. Instead Empires Nursery demonstrates that juvenile readers often played an active part in committing the country to adventurism overseas. The history of the United States in the world must therefore make room for the countrys littlest policymakers. As kids eagerly read dime novels series fiction pulp magazines and comic books that dramatized the virtues of empire they helped entrench a growing belief in Americas indispensability to the international order. The American Centurys actualization depended upon the patient work of writers proselytizing among the youthful millions educated to embrace their Uncle Sams growing global entanglements How the West was fun Serialized Impreialism Empires amateurs Internationalist impulses Dollar diplomacy for the price of a few nickels Comic book cold war.