For some time we have been adding days, weeks, or months of celebration and remembrance to our national calendar, some of them amusing or frivolous, others earnest and important, others profoundly serious. Truly, as you’ll see from these stories, we do need those cultural moments to celebrate and to contemplate.
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Childrens-Book-Week-1.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 11/15/1999 National Children’s Book Week Transcript National Children’s Book Week has been celebrated in November since 1919, thanks to the spirited leadership of Frederic Melcher, the editor of Publisher’s Weekly at the time, who argued that such an annual event was necessary because it […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Famous-Black-Quotations.mp3 Author Jim Haskins Air Date 11/10/1999 “Stretch Your Wings” Transcript Today, to mark the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jim Haskins, himself the author of two books about Dr. King, has this review of “Stretch Your Wings — famous Black Quotations for Teens. Words of […]
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Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/National-Chemistry-Week.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 11/8/1999 National Chemistry Week Transcript This is National Chemistry Week. My father was an inorganic, analytical chemist. “Inorganic” means metal, he tells me — and that’s what he worked with all of his adult life — those red-hot lines of alloys that ran through […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/St-Nicholas-Day.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 12/6/1999 St. Nicholas Day Transcript Before he became a rotund Dutch uncle, smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe and trying to stuff his wide girth into an impossibly small chimney — in the form made famous in Thomas Nast’s cartoons–the original Saint Nicholas was hardly […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/James-Riley-Orphan-Annie-1.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 10/29/1999 “Little Orphant Annie” Transcript James Whitcomb Riley was a widely known Indiana poet ofthe late 1800s. He was so popular that in 1915, a year before his death, the National Commissioner of Education ordered that on his birthday, October 7, a Riley poem […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Family-History-Month.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 10/25/1999 Family Folklore Books Transcript I have an assignment for you. I can’t help it; it’s the teacher in me. It’s Family History Month, and I know it’s a little late in the month, but you can carry this over into November, and December […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Winnie-the-Pooh.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 10/21/1999 Winnie the Pooh’s Anniversary Transcript It seems like we should be throwing some kind of party today, a big party with many jars of honey and Good Things To Eat, and cards inscribed with HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY. Because it’s the 73rd […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Teen-Read-Week-NYE.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 10/19/1999 Teen Read Week Transcript We’re talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children’s culture. One of the areas in which teens seem to be reading and writing more than ever is poetry. A new selection of poems […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Teen-Read-Week.mp3 Author Jim Haskins Air Date 10/18/1999 Teen Read Week Transcript This is Teen Read Week and we’ve asked Jim Haskins, one of our leading authors of books of non-fiction and biography for teenagers, for his thoughts about that perennial question: how do we get teens to read more in […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/School-Lunch-Week.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 10/13/1999 School Lunch Week Transcript It’s School Lunch Week and the kids on the playground aren’t singing about the joys of macaroni and cheese or yogurt and fruit, or even pizza with four toppings. When I asked them what they’d like for lunch — […]