Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Oxford-and-Wonderland.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 2/27/2007 Oxford University Museum of Natural History Oxford and Wonderland Transcript When one thinks of the world of children’s literature, both in the fictive world and the real world, England often comes to mind. From Peter Pan’s statue in Kensington Gardens in London, to […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Childrens-Favorite-Books-a-Century-Ago.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 12/6/2006 Children’s Favorites Transcript These days, a stroll past the desk in the children’s department of any public library will provide you with a list of “Best Books for Young Readers” or a few minutes spent online will lead to an abundance of good […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Lewis-Carrolls-Puzzles.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 1/27/2005 Lewis Carroll’s Poetic Puzzles Transcript Perhaps no four lines are more famous in the realm of children’s poetry than the opening stanza to “Jabberwocky”, – Lewis Carroll’s penultimate moment as a children’s poet – As read by William Rushton from the first chapter […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/T-S-Eliot-That-Ol-Possum.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 9/23/2004 T. S. Eliot Transcript T. S. Eliot has been called “The greatest literary figure of the English-speaking world in the 20th Century.” He was the recipient of the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature and his poem, The Waste Land, is widely considered the most […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Inventing-Alice.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 7/3/2003 The Day Alice Was Written Transcript Published in 1865, the bizarre and nonsensical Alice in Wonderlandmarks the moment when literature for children became something more than nursery rhymes and moral tales. It is amazing to think that a good deal of that story was […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/John-Lennon-Imagining.mp3 Author Kevin Shortsleeve Air Date 10/9/2002 John Lennon – Imagining Transcript When John Lennon was 11 years old, he received a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as a birthday present. The surreal, nonsensical volume left a lasting impression on the young man. Lennon notes, “I was passionate about Alice in […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Isaac-Watts-A-First-Childrens-Poet.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 7/18/2002 Isaac Watts Transcript Isaac Watts, born in 1674 in England, was a Non-conformist minister and a hymn writer. In his lifetime he wrote over 600 hymns. Some of them, such as O God, Our Help in Ages Past, When I Survey the Wondrous […]
It was James Joyce’s birthday this weekend, and Kevin Shortsleeve has something to say about this famous Irish author and his gift for nonsense.
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Charles-Kingsley-and-his-Water-Babies.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 6/21/2001 Charles Kingsley Transcript Charles Kingsley’s reputation in the world of children’s literature rests almost solely on his novel Water Babies, which, along with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, is generally regarded as heralding the Golden Age of children’s literature. The Water Babies is […]
Author John Cech (read by Fiona Barnes) Air Date 6/5/2001 Wonderland on the Auction Block Transcript Tomorrow, Sotheby’s in London will be auctioning off nothing less than …. Wonderland itself — a unique copy of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (the title of the story before it became Alice in Wonderland), inscribed by its author, Lewis […]