In 1900, two British gentleman whose names may be pseudononymous wrote a book entitled Little People: An Alphabet. In 1901, this book was published by Grant Richards in London. In 2008, the book was made available for free for the world to see courtesy of Gutenberg. In early 2013, while searching for old-school alphabet books, I found it online.
If your kids and family are old enough to begin a thorough study of ethnic stereotypes and bias, this should be a seminal text. "B is for Boer" even led me to a little shudder- but I appreciate the opportunity to teach history with an eye to how racism and propaganda continue to perpetuate foreign misadventures and corporatist foreign policies which result in the death of human beings whose names we shall never hear or even learn to pronounce.
So here is the verse form of "U is for United States" preceded by the illustration. There's a subliminal Shirley Temple-ness to it which is interesting because she wasn't yet living when this book was published. Perhaps Shirley grew up with Little People....
And houses twenty stories high,
Saw-mills and millionaires and bustle;
The people there "have got to hustle."
Ex-clu-sive-ly by telephone;
And that is why the people say,
"I guess we're 'cute in U. S. A."
