Someone once said that a good writer, whether for children or adults, has one story, which s/he keeps telling in various disguised ways; the fantastic writer has two stories; and the genius has three. Shakespeare, for example, could write tragedies, comedies, and histories with equal brilliance. In the world of children’s books, you can count the geniuses on one hand. In the pieces in this section, we write about them all – the good writers, the terrific writers, and, yes, those geniuses.
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Books-for-Boys.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 9/12/2000 Books for Boys Transcript There has been a wave of books and public discussions in recent years about the importance of raising less aggressive, more emotionally-centered boys. Boys whose values and actions will make us proud, as parents and as a society. One […]
Today, Rita Smith’s recollection returns us to one of the most famous creators of children’s books in England in the late 19th Century – Walter Crane.
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/The-Boys-Account-of-It.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 8/3/2000 The Boy’s Account of It Transcript In 1909, when he was eight years old, William Culver Roberts, Jr., whose nickname was “Bobs, ” published his first book called The Boy’s Account of It — the “It” being the grand tour he took with […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Saint-Exupery.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 7/31/2000 Antoine Saint-Exupery Transcript It’s the hundredth anniversary this month of the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French writer who gave us one of the classic works of children’s literature in The Little Prince, that philosophical story about a star-child’s search for meaning […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Saint-Nicholas-1-1.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 7/18/2000 St. Nicholas in July Transcript As editor of the 19th century juvenile magazine, St. Nicholas, Mary Mapes Dodge wrote an essay outlining her editorial philosophy. Two ideas in particular standout in this essay. First is her assertion that an “ideal juvenile magazine must […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Catcher-in-the-Rye.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 7/17/2000 The Catcher in the Rye Transcript There really isn’t a sound bite that we can offer you to introduce J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which was published forty-nine years ago this week, because it’s never been turned into an audio […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/IB-Singer.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 7/14/2000 I. B. Singer Transcript It’s the birthday this week of the late Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize winning author who, perhaps more than any other writer in this century, has kept the vivid idioms of Yiddish alive in this country through his […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Johanna-Spyri.mp3 Author John Cech Air Date 7/12/2000 Johanna Spyri Transcript Johanna Spyri, (Spee-ree) the author of the children’s classic, Heidi, was born July 12, 1827. Heidi, of course, has been through many editions and adaptations, including several film versions in the one hundred twenty years since it was written. Heidi […]
