Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Lothar-Meggendorfer-Master-of-the-Pop-up.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 7/29/2003 Lothar Meggendorfer Transcript Movable books for children have been around since the late 18th century. Peter Haining, in his history of movable books, believes that during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the German, Lothar Meggendorfer, created the most elaborate and […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/American-Sunday-School-Movement.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 5/14/2003 American Sunday School Movement Transcript In May of 1824 in Philadelphia, The American Sunday School Union was established to serve as a clearinghouse for the many Sunday Schools which had sprung up throughout the northeast, and the Ohio Valley. It was an interdenominational […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Tony-Sarg-Master-Puppeteer.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 4/24/2003 Tony Sarg, Master Puppeteer Transcript Although Tony Sarg wrote over a dozen children’s books, and as a youngster dreamed of becoming an illustrator, he possessed and displayed a mechanical ingenuity, even as a little boy, that lead him in another direction. Tony lived […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Martha-Finley-Rediscovered.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 4/15/2003 Martha Finley Transcript Although Martha Finley was practically a pariah among historians and critics of children’s literature and was ignored by reviewers, she was wildly popular with her young readers. The book she wrote and published in 1867, Elsie Dinsmore, outsold every other […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/The-Vassar-Girls-Abroad.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 3/28/2003 The Vassar Girls Abroad Transcript “In every age,” critic Virginia Haviland writes, “current events leave their mark on literature. In the nineteenth century, events contributing to the opening up of the world stimulated a new production of travel books for adults and a […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Americas-First-Childrens-Magazine.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 2/5/2003 America’s First Children’s Magazine Transcript In 1826 Lydia Maria Child founded the Juvenile Miscellany which has been called the “first children’s magazine in America.” Child’s biographer, Carolyn Karcher, writes that Child “helped shape children’s literature into a powerful medium for socializing the young into the […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Clara-Bartons-Childhood.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 12/26/2002 Clara Barton Transcript Clarissa Barton, the woman who became known as Clara, was born December 25, 1821, the youngest by ten years of five children. She was a shy girl and when she was nine years old, to help her overcome her shyness, […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/St-Nicholas-League-First-Kids-Club.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 11/21/2002 St. Nicholas League, First Kids’ Club Transcript St. Nicholas was a popular American juvenile periodical that was issued monthly from November 1873 through March 1940. Throughout its history, various departments were established and abolished: The column “Curiosity Shop” for example, focused attention on […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Hitty-Her-First-100-Years.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 11/4/2002 Hitty, Her First 100 Years Transcript The publication of Hitty, Her First 100 Years was announced to the world on November 3, 1929, in the pages of the New York Herald Tribune. The book purports to be the memoirs of Hitty, short for Hitabel, […]
Listen to the Recess! Clip https://recess.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/Marketing-Little-Golden-Books.mp3 Author Rita Smith Air Date 10/8/2002 More Little Golden Books Transcript The “Little Golden Book” series of children’s books, introduced in 1942 by the publisher Simon and Schuster, were an immediate and phenomenal success. Within the first ten years they had sold 182,615,000 copies, jumping to 300,000,000 two years […]