L'Heure Joyeuse: Educational and Social Reform in Post-World War I Brussels

The day after the Armistice of 1918 was signed ending World War I, the Book Committee on Children’s Libraries was established by a group of American women. The committee’s relief efforts focused on the establishment of children’s libraries in order to help with the
“educational reconstruction” of Belgium and France. This article focuses on the first of these children’s libraries, L’Heure Joyeuse
Brand Whitlock, and the ways in which it became a site of educational and social reform. On the day after the Armistice of 1918 was signed, the American Art War Relief Committee, headed by Mrs. Caroline Griffiths, established a new foundation, the American Book Committee on Children’s Libraries. Its aim was to help the children in the areas of Belgium and France devastated by the war. For Belgium the close of the Great War brought to an end four years of German occupation marked by famine; deportation; destruction of housing, land, and industries; unemployment; and civilian, political, and military casualties. One of the worst battles of the war, Ypres in Flanders, had been fought on Belgium territory. As a newspaper article suggested,the postwar rebuilding presented Brussels with the opportunity “to inaugurate a new era of efforts aimed at school age children; encouraging the development of a literary culture which they so deeply lacked” (Mixame, 1920, p. 7). On September 24, 1920, the first children’s library, known as L’Heure Joyeuse Brand Whitlock, opened in Brussels. This article focuses on its founding and the ways in which it became a site of educational and
social reform.