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[CCBC-Net] minding our education
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From: Nel <nelcward>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:02:27 -0700
I have enjoyed hearing about the remarkable librarians some of you have had. You might also be interested in the other side of the story. Growing up in a town of 500 during the 1940s and 1950s, I had only a library about 10' X 20' that was open Tuesday afternoons and early Saturday evenings. The kindly little old lady who checked out books was very careful about what children read: I wasn't allowed to get any Nancy Drew books until I was ten. She didn't know that by then an understanding neighbor had checked them all out for me and that by that age I had finished not only all of those but also the Earle Stanley Gardner books.
Her favorite author was Grace Livingston Hill (if you haven't heard about her, don't bother to seek her out), and she had two shelves of Hill's books. My mother was born in 1898 and my father in 1878, so the books in the home were those from the late 1800s and early 1900s. When I took a class in the history of "children's literature," I was the only one who had read the Elsie Dinsmore and Little Colonel series as well as many others from that period.
The only "new" books in the library were the ones that came from a city book mobile once each month. I probably read each of these at least five times because so few books were available. A school library, you might ask? It had seven shelves of books, and one was an encyclopedia set. My English classes during the first three years of high school concentrated on grammar. My diagramming is topnotch! The literature during my senior year came as a great shock.
Despite this beginning, I was a voracious reader of anything I could find and have continued this until the present day. My great reading interest led me to active reading/discussing on ALA book selection committees for over 20 years as well as coordinating a young readers' book preview group in what might be called a rural area. (I do wonder how my life would have been different if I had had exposure to the librarians that you have described.)
Thank you, Mr. Marcus, for your participation in the last two weeks and your insightful books. For some reason, I found GOLDEN LEGACY particularly fascinating, perhaps because I had so much exposure to these books. And as I read MINDERS, I enjoyed remembering the wonderful people I have met during the last several decades. Your contribution of the history of young readers' literature is invaluable.
Nel Ward, Retired School Librarian Newport, OR
----- Original Message ----- From: "Crystal Faris" <CrystalFaris at kclibrary.org> To: <leonardsma at aol.com>; <miriammeister at gmail.com>;
<ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 12:13 PM Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] minding our education
How fascinating this discussion has been and how lucky I am as a reader for Leonard to be curious about what children's books revealed concerning a new nation. Much of this discussion has focused on the time period when children's services in libraries began and held such strength in publishing. Yet, I found myself the most fascinated with the earliest chapters in Minders. The first chapter especially drew me as the deep connection between the church leaders and children's books in the very early days of what was to become the US was made clear. Of course so many people have such a lingering desire to protect children from what they may read...it is ingrained in our early history.
As a side note I count myself very lucky to have had a marvelous public librarian in the tiny town of Augusta, Kansas who very graciously shelved all the Nancy Drew in numerical order rather than alphabetical order. I remember her saying to me, "Dear, if you are so enamored of strong female characters you really should read The Witch of Blackbird Pond." I trusted her recommendations always after that.
Crystal Faris | director of teen services | kansas city public library 14 w. 10th st | kc, mo 64105 | 816.701.3513w | 816.701.3401f | 816.876.6637c
-----Original Message----- From: ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
[mailto:ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu] On Behalf Of leonardsma at aol.com Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 3:10 PM To: miriammeister at gmail.com; ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] minding our education
I was an extremely verbal child--and a remedial reader. My reading teacher asked me, in second grade I think, to write her poems for me to read to her at our next week's sessions. I found that I enjoyed doing that very much. And of course because I had written the poems myself, they were very easy to read. So that was my start. As the youngest of three children, I had lots of hand me down books at home, including 15 or 20 Little Golden Books, but really all sorts of things. We had an excellent Carnegie library in my home town, Mount Vernon, NY, and a bookmobile that parked two blocks from our house. I loved going in one end and leaving, with a book or two in hand, by the other. As I reached the point of choosing books for myself I found I wanted to read history books and biographies (surprise, surprise). I made my parents special order a copy of the Young Readers' edition of John F. Kennedy's PROFILES IN COURAGE, because I was fascinated by Kennedy (I had campaigned for him
the previous year at the age of ten). I began buying illustrated books at junk sales before I was a teenager for the sake of having a book at home that I considered beautiful. In fifth grade I belonged to a writing club, organized by our school librarian, which was visited one day by a local author whose last name (I remembered vaguely years later) could also be a first name. Eventually I realized that the author who had made such an impression was Jean George. It was so good later still to get to know her. The club was not a completely happy experience. The librarian accused me of having plagarized something that she thought I could not have written myself. It was lucky I had such a strong sense of myself, and a mother who was willing to tell the librarian off. At Yale I decided on my own to write about the history of American children's books--my idea being that early 19th century books might reveal something about how a new nation, formed on new principles, had been launc
hed. My advisor was David Brion Davis, an authority on the history o
f slavery and a deeply curious man; I was grateful he took on my project at a time when others in the much vaunted Yale history dept didn't see the point of studying children's books. I discovered Nancy Burkert's SNOW WHITE when I was I was a graduate student in the Iowa Writers Workshop for poetry; that was the first children's book I saw with art that I thought deserved to be seen in a museum. I found GOODNIGHT MOON while browsing in a New York book store a few years later. The poetry and distilled simplicity of it amazed me. I was looking for a big project for myself just then and thought that maybe I could write a biography of this poet for very young children.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Lang Budin <miriammeister at gmail.com>
To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 2:41 pm
Subject: [CCBC-Net] minding our education
I, too, want to thank Leonard and the rest of the ccbc-net community for this fascinating discussion. Leonard has been magnificently generous with his time and his store of knowledge. We are so lucky the children's literature, publishing and librarianship captured his interest back in his undergraduate days! That makes me wonder what books might have been formative for you, Leonard. What did you read as a child and what was read to you? Who were your "minders of make-believe"? Parents? Teachers? Librarians? Peers? Also, in response to Hollis, I'd like to mention that when I was in library school (U. of Chicago, mid-70's) we certainly studied the history of children's literature and of public libraries. Maybe all that got tossed out as new technologies gained ascendancy and course requirements changed. Then, too, the speciality in children's service seemed to have been dropped by many library schools for quite a while. My impression is that it has
been revived in some places. Does anyone know if that's true? And, in a related question, do education students generally study the history of education? -- Miriam Lang Budin Chappaqua Library, NY
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Thu 31 Jul 2008 03:02:27 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:02:27 -0700
I have enjoyed hearing about the remarkable librarians some of you have had. You might also be interested in the other side of the story. Growing up in a town of 500 during the 1940s and 1950s, I had only a library about 10' X 20' that was open Tuesday afternoons and early Saturday evenings. The kindly little old lady who checked out books was very careful about what children read: I wasn't allowed to get any Nancy Drew books until I was ten. She didn't know that by then an understanding neighbor had checked them all out for me and that by that age I had finished not only all of those but also the Earle Stanley Gardner books.
Her favorite author was Grace Livingston Hill (if you haven't heard about her, don't bother to seek her out), and she had two shelves of Hill's books. My mother was born in 1898 and my father in 1878, so the books in the home were those from the late 1800s and early 1900s. When I took a class in the history of "children's literature," I was the only one who had read the Elsie Dinsmore and Little Colonel series as well as many others from that period.
The only "new" books in the library were the ones that came from a city book mobile once each month. I probably read each of these at least five times because so few books were available. A school library, you might ask? It had seven shelves of books, and one was an encyclopedia set. My English classes during the first three years of high school concentrated on grammar. My diagramming is topnotch! The literature during my senior year came as a great shock.
Despite this beginning, I was a voracious reader of anything I could find and have continued this until the present day. My great reading interest led me to active reading/discussing on ALA book selection committees for over 20 years as well as coordinating a young readers' book preview group in what might be called a rural area. (I do wonder how my life would have been different if I had had exposure to the librarians that you have described.)
Thank you, Mr. Marcus, for your participation in the last two weeks and your insightful books. For some reason, I found GOLDEN LEGACY particularly fascinating, perhaps because I had so much exposure to these books. And as I read MINDERS, I enjoyed remembering the wonderful people I have met during the last several decades. Your contribution of the history of young readers' literature is invaluable.
Nel Ward, Retired School Librarian Newport, OR
----- Original Message ----- From: "Crystal Faris" <CrystalFaris at kclibrary.org> To: <leonardsma at aol.com>; <miriammeister at gmail.com>;
<ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 12:13 PM Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] minding our education
How fascinating this discussion has been and how lucky I am as a reader for Leonard to be curious about what children's books revealed concerning a new nation. Much of this discussion has focused on the time period when children's services in libraries began and held such strength in publishing. Yet, I found myself the most fascinated with the earliest chapters in Minders. The first chapter especially drew me as the deep connection between the church leaders and children's books in the very early days of what was to become the US was made clear. Of course so many people have such a lingering desire to protect children from what they may read...it is ingrained in our early history.
As a side note I count myself very lucky to have had a marvelous public librarian in the tiny town of Augusta, Kansas who very graciously shelved all the Nancy Drew in numerical order rather than alphabetical order. I remember her saying to me, "Dear, if you are so enamored of strong female characters you really should read The Witch of Blackbird Pond." I trusted her recommendations always after that.
Crystal Faris | director of teen services | kansas city public library 14 w. 10th st | kc, mo 64105 | 816.701.3513w | 816.701.3401f | 816.876.6637c
-----Original Message----- From: ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
[mailto:ccbc-net-bounces at ccbc.education.wisc.edu] On Behalf Of leonardsma at aol.com Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 3:10 PM To: miriammeister at gmail.com; ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] minding our education
I was an extremely verbal child--and a remedial reader. My reading teacher asked me, in second grade I think, to write her poems for me to read to her at our next week's sessions. I found that I enjoyed doing that very much. And of course because I had written the poems myself, they were very easy to read. So that was my start. As the youngest of three children, I had lots of hand me down books at home, including 15 or 20 Little Golden Books, but really all sorts of things. We had an excellent Carnegie library in my home town, Mount Vernon, NY, and a bookmobile that parked two blocks from our house. I loved going in one end and leaving, with a book or two in hand, by the other. As I reached the point of choosing books for myself I found I wanted to read history books and biographies (surprise, surprise). I made my parents special order a copy of the Young Readers' edition of John F. Kennedy's PROFILES IN COURAGE, because I was fascinated by Kennedy (I had campaigned for him
the previous year at the age of ten). I began buying illustrated books at junk sales before I was a teenager for the sake of having a book at home that I considered beautiful. In fifth grade I belonged to a writing club, organized by our school librarian, which was visited one day by a local author whose last name (I remembered vaguely years later) could also be a first name. Eventually I realized that the author who had made such an impression was Jean George. It was so good later still to get to know her. The club was not a completely happy experience. The librarian accused me of having plagarized something that she thought I could not have written myself. It was lucky I had such a strong sense of myself, and a mother who was willing to tell the librarian off. At Yale I decided on my own to write about the history of American children's books--my idea being that early 19th century books might reveal something about how a new nation, formed on new principles, had been launc
hed. My advisor was David Brion Davis, an authority on the history o
f slavery and a deeply curious man; I was grateful he took on my project at a time when others in the much vaunted Yale history dept didn't see the point of studying children's books. I discovered Nancy Burkert's SNOW WHITE when I was I was a graduate student in the Iowa Writers Workshop for poetry; that was the first children's book I saw with art that I thought deserved to be seen in a museum. I found GOODNIGHT MOON while browsing in a New York book store a few years later. The poetry and distilled simplicity of it amazed me. I was looking for a big project for myself just then and thought that maybe I could write a biography of this poet for very young children.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Lang Budin <miriammeister at gmail.com>
To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 2:41 pm
Subject: [CCBC-Net] minding our education
I, too, want to thank Leonard and the rest of the ccbc-net community for this fascinating discussion. Leonard has been magnificently generous with his time and his store of knowledge. We are so lucky the children's literature, publishing and librarianship captured his interest back in his undergraduate days! That makes me wonder what books might have been formative for you, Leonard. What did you read as a child and what was read to you? Who were your "minders of make-believe"? Parents? Teachers? Librarians? Peers? Also, in response to Hollis, I'd like to mention that when I was in library school (U. of Chicago, mid-70's) we certainly studied the history of children's literature and of public libraries. Maybe all that got tossed out as new technologies gained ascendancy and course requirements changed. Then, too, the speciality in children's service seemed to have been dropped by many library schools for quite a while. My impression is that it has
been revived in some places. Does anyone know if that's true? And, in a related question, do education students generally study the history of education? -- Miriam Lang Budin Chappaqua Library, NY
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Thu 31 Jul 2008 03:02:27 PM CDT
