While scholarship has documented it-narratives as records of contemporary attitudes toward material objects, their adaptation in American children’s literature has largely gone unexplored. This article analyzes how Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Whole History of Grandfather’s Chair (1898) and Louisa May Alcott’s object stories transform the British it-narrative genre to fulfill specific American educational purposes. Despite their reorientation toward juvenile audiences, these works maintain the fundamental generic features of traditional it-narratives, including circulation patterns, limited agency, and episodic encounters. Using the temporal circulation and framing device, Hawthorne’s chair serves as a witness to national history. Alcott effectively merges moral purpose and imaginative fantasy, emphasizing children’s growth into romantic imagination. This evolution illustrates how American authors adapted an inherited literary form to address cultural priorities in children’s development, thereby establishing American children’s literature as a tradition with distinct aesthetic and educational goals.
