Abstract: This essay analyzes how readers of the religious periodical The Children’s Prize (1863–1931), which targeted a mixed-gender reader-ship of younger readers, were encouraged to think about their place within their natural environment. It argues that the depiction of children’s interactions with animals in the periodical’s first thirty years of publication challenges assertions about the difference between how boys and girls treated living creatures. Instead of presenting girls as preservers and boys as destroyers, the periodical constructs both genders as equally capable of animal cruelty, drawing attention to the latent power held by young children.
