Following up on David McCullough

I ran out of time yesterday, and wanted to add this list of suggested readings to go with my post yesterday about David McCullough's new 1776: The Illustrated Edition, the illustrated and abridged edition of Mr. McCullough's original 1776.

All of the children's books listed below are narrative histories and overviews of the period, rather than books about a particular element of the American Revolution (which means the list doesn't include any biographies or the terrific Jean Fritz books, such as And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?). And interestingly, all are illustrated (the first two are picture books) and by authors who have written extensively for children about history, especially American history.

For children (ages 8 or 9 and up/younger as a readaloud):

Liberty or Death: The American Revolution: 1763-1783 by Betsy Maestro with illustrations by Giulio Maestro, from the Maestros' wonderful "American Story" series

George vs. George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides by Rosalyn Schanzer (useful for Canadians and other Loyalist types)

For children (ages 10 or so and up):

Give Me Liberty: The Story of the Declaration of Independence by Russell Freedman

For children (ages 12 or so and up):

The Real Revolution: The Global Story of American Independence by Marc Aronson; nifty free teacher guides at Marc Aronson's website.

Respectable history for a general readership: bad news and a bit of good news

I'm slowly wading through news from the past week or two and was saddened to read in The New York Times (registration is free or use Bug Me Not) that the wonderful American Heritage Magazine has suspended publication with the April/May 2007 issue, now on newsstands. Editor Richard F. Snow, who started in the magazine's mailroom in 1965, told The Times earlier this month that the bimonthly magazine, owned by Forbes Inc., has been for sale since January, and "in the absence of a buyer ... the publishers have decided to put the next issue, June-July, on indefinite hold."

The good news is that at least for the present, American Heritage will continue to publish on its incredibly useful and informative (not to mention easy to navigate) website. Make use of it now while you can. You can, believe it or not, search the archives for articles in each and every print issue all the way back to the very first of December 1954, which includes the article on "The Writing of History: An English Authority Compares British and American Viewpoints" by D. W. Brogan. You can also revisit eminent American historian and first AH managing editor Bruce Catton's column, "Reading, Writing, and History" on the long-forgotten Cadwallader commotion. The AH website each day includes several features at the bottom of the page, including "today in history" and the quotation of the day. Today, the former includes the news thatin 1929, the Marx Brothers' first film, The Cocoanuts, opened; in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened to traffic; in 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first telegram; and in 1830, the first American passenger railroad began service. The thought for the day is one of my favorite's from Mark Twain: "“It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.”

There's also a link on the home page to historian Bernard Weisberger's "Funeral Oration for American Heritage", published at History News Network [links provided by me],

Allow me to shed a sentimental senior tear or two for the dear, departed print version of American Heritage, executed by Forbes, Inc., for the crime of attracting only one third of a million (350,000 to be exact) regular readers. Whether the online edition is granted a full pardon or merely a reprieve seems unclear at this moment. It's all rather personal with me. I'm one of the earliest contributors, with a piece on revivalist star of the eighteen-seventies, Dwight L. Moody, in the August 1955 issue, Subsequently I wrote a very large quantity of reviews and articles on assorted topics, the last (on political polling) appearing in 2000 -- plus books for the then-independent American Heritage Corporation's juvenile, text-book and mail-order book divisions [many of which grace the Farm School shelves], all long since sold away or terminated with extreme prejudice. But the magazine was my true home, a perfect haven for an academically trained historian who enjoys the challenge of writing respectable history for a general readership. From 1970 to 1972 I was on full-time staff as an Associate Editor, a personal way station on the road to leaving college teaching. Finally, from 1989 to 1999 I was a regular columnist, connecting today's news with yesterday's history, much as HNN does now.

But it's those two years as Associate Editor that I recall most fondly. The company's offices were then in the Fred F. French building at 45th Street and 5th Avenue, handy to the restaurants, theaters and tourist attractions of midtown Manhattan. Bruce Catton was still there, friendly but usually secluded in his office and working on his own projects, but also doing a smooth, professional job of doctoring articles referred to him by Oliver Jensen, the active editor. ...

We had our squabbles, our jealousies, our complaints of the management and our share of the clashes between editorial and business departments. But I do not recall tension between the "picture people"--the highly competent pictorial research staff--and those of us on the "print side." We all agreed on the concept of a generously illustrated magazine, with words and images mutually reinforcing each other, that took history seriously. We liked and respected what we did, and this is not mere nostalgia for golden days of youthful aspiration--we were all well past thirty.

It is, of course, exactly that seriousness which critics of the magazine denied. They said its wish to entertain short-changed its power to instruct. I'll grant that there was a possible over-supply of drums and trumpets, "quaint corners of the past," and Great White Males in those early numbers. (Oliver Jensen stoutly denied this.) But there was also plenty of food for reflection. What was more, the pages included many articles by rising and already risen stars of the academy--Britons like B. H. Liddell Hart, J.H. Plumb and D.W. Brogan, and Americans like Allan Nevins, Richard B. Morris, Daniel Boorstin, Carl Degler, David Donald, T. Harry Williams and Bernard Bailyn. The thinking was that well-told narrative reclaimed history, for many readers, from memories of abominable teaching in their elementary and high schools, and that the amalgam of words and images opened minds and doors to further exploration. Of course scholarly analysis and critical examination of sources is urgent and can even occasionally be made intriguing. But I personally thought that the separate existence of "popular" history was saving the field from the flight into specialization and distance from the common concerns of life that befell academic philosophy and what was once called "political economy" and was read by most educated people. I have taken that philosophy with me into the areas of television documentaries. History deserves and has many mansions. [Emphasis mine, too.]

Read the rest here, especially Mr. Weisberger's thoughts on what led to the company's demise.

From the Times article [links provided by me, not NYT],

The magazine has always been a bit of an anomaly among American publications.

The circulation is currently 350,000, or as high as it has ever been, and hundreds of those readers can still be reliably counted on to write in arguing about the true causes of the Civil War or, as happened recently, to point out that the author of a World War II article doesn’t know the difference between the M-1 rifle and the M-16, which didn’t come in until Vietnam.

American Heritage was founded in 1954 by James Parton, Oliver Jensen and Joseph J. Thorndike Jr., refugees from Life, who from the beginning broke most of the rules of magazine publishing. They determined not to accept ads, for example — on the ground that there was a “basic incompatibility between the tones of the voice of history and of advertising” — and instead charged a yearly subscription of $10, a figure so steep at the time that readers were allowed to pay it in installments. They also published in clothbound, hardback volumes with full-color paintings mounted on the front.

The format was an instant hit with readers, who instead of tossing back issues often shelved them in their bookcases, but it initially confounded the United States Post Office, which decreed that American Heritage could use neither the book rate nor the periodical one. That ruling was eventually overturned, but not until the magazine had almost bankrupted itself by paying for parcel post.

The first editor of American Heritage was Bruce Catton, a Civil War historian who wrote in the inaugural issue in December 1954 that “the faith that moves us is, quite simply, the belief that our heritage is best understood by a study of the things that the ordinary folk of America have done and thought and dreamed since first they began to live here.” In the beginning, at least, that meant a fair amount of WASPy nostalgia and a steady ration of stories about the Civil War. That inaugural issue, for example, includes a piece about a Union general who was falsely accused of treason in 1862, as well as articles about the country store, the Fall River steamship line and a lament by Cleveland Amory about the decline of New York men’s clubs.

Mr. Snow, 59, went to work in the American Heritage mailroom in 1965, when Columbia University insisted he take a little time off, and joined the staff full time when he finally graduated, in 1970. He has been there ever since, and in 1990 he became the magazine’s sixth editor, succeeding Byron Dobell. ...

Mr. Snow has been at American Heritage long enough that he can remember when it was an empire in the mid-’60s, employing 400 people, with the magazine as a flagship for what was in effect a publishing company selling books, many of them by some of America’s best-known popular historians, by direct mail. He was managing editor in 1980, when the magazine ceased publishing in hardback (except for subscribers who wanted to shell out extra for what Mr. Snow now calls a “padded, leatheroid edition”), and in 1982 when, bowing to economic necessity, it began soliciting ads.

“We all felt very bad about taking advertising,” Mr. Snow recalled. “But it had the odd effect of making us feel we were in touch with the world. There was a sense of a living connection to a process that was actually sort of fun — or at least it was fun while we were getting ads.”

American Heritage remained more driven by circulation than by ads, however. According to Scott Masterson, a senior vice president at Forbes and president of American Heritage, the magazine was losing money when Forbes bought it in 1986 and then bounced back for a while. But in the late ’90s, Mr. Masterson said, it failed to reap the kind of profits that many magazines did, and after 2001 it experienced the same downturn that afflicted the magazine business in general and had trouble recovering.

Part of the problem was the Internet, Mr. Snow said. “We’re really a general interest magazine,” he said. “We don’t play to a history buff in any narrow sense — like the Civil War re-enactors, for example. They can go on the Web and get thousands and thousands of hits.”

Three years ago Mr. Snow and Mr. Masterson decided to embrace the magazine’s aging readership and rejiggered American Heritage to appeal more specifically to baby boomers, mostly publishing articles about things that had happened in their lifetime. The formula was an editorial success, Mr. Snow said, yielding articles like one that appeared in the February-March issue about the Wrecking Crew, an unheralded studio band that played on many hit records in the ’60s and ’70s. But it failed to provide the hoped-for bump on the business end. “Forbes has been very, very patient,” he said. “but basically they’ve been carrying us for a while.”

Read the rest here.

From Bruce Catton's inaugural essay cited by The Times, "What They Did There", American Heritage Magazine, December 1954:

The sun goes down every evening over the muzzle of a gun that has been a museum piece for nearly a century, and where there was a battlefield there is now a park, with green fields rolling west under the sunset haze to the misty blue mountain wall. You can see it all just about as it used to be, and to look at it brings up deep moods and sacred memories that are part of our American heritage.

Yet the moods and the memories are not quite enough, for Gettysburg battlefield—like any other historic site—is memorable not for its scenic and evocative qualities but because it symbolizes the struggles and the sacrifices and the terrible hopes of people in a great moment of crisis. The men who fought at Gettysburg are all gone now but once they were very much alive, contending desperately with a fate which was almost more than they could cope with; and as Mr. Lincoln remarked, the world can never forget what they did there.

It is precisely that question—What did men do there?—that animates every worth-while examination of the American past.

For history after all is the story of people: a statement that might seem too obvious to be worth making if it were not for the fact that history so often is presented in terms of vast incomprehensible forces moving far under the surface, carrying human beings along, helpless, and making them conform to a pattern whose true shape they never see. The pattern does exist, often enough, and it is important to trace it. Yet it is good to remember that it is the people who make the pattern, and not the other way around.

The editors of any magazine calling itself American Heritage must begin by stating the faith that moves them; and the faith that moves us is, quite simply, the belief that our heritage is best understood by a study of the things that the ordinary folk of America have done and thought and dreamed since first they began to live here. They have done and thought and dreamed some rather extraordinary things, as a matter of fact, whose true significance does not always appear on the surface.

For a great many of the things people do seem rather unimportant, at first glance. They sing tinkly little songs, or they give way to queer enthusiasms about race horses or steamboats or carved figureheads for sailing ships; they fall victim to fear and suspicion, and so work hardship on some of their fellows who are doing the best they can according to the lights that were given them; they paint pictures of Indians, or of fire engines, or of landscapes that seem to carry some important message in their play of light and shade and color: they dig for precious metals in forsaken pockets of dangerous mountain ranges, they drowse lazily about the cracker barrel in a crossroads grocery store, and sometimes a few of them strive frantically to get people to buy one brand of soap rather than another, or grow snobbish and form clubs so that they can live comfortably on a plane above their fellows. These things are not very important, probably, except that each one contributes its own bit to the heritage by which we live—and each one, therefore, is worth looking at, because in each one we see the enthusiasms, the foibles, the impelling drives or the wistful dreams of the men and women who have made America.

So we propose to look into all such things; and because the infinite drama of human life can come out most clearly when people are least conscious of drama, trying to handle the prosaic business of making a living on a day-to-day basis, we believe that we do not always need to go to what are supposed to be the great moments of history in order to show American history in the making. The fearful climax of Gettysburg compels the attention, to be sure. But Gettysburg would not have been what it was if there had not been generations of plain folk beforehand, laying out farms and working in shops and stores, quite unaware that they were on the high road to destiny but somehow living and working in such a way that when destiny came along they could meet it without batting an eye.

Our beat, in other words, is anything that ever happened in America. Our principal question is: What did men do there? Our chief requirement as we set out to tell about it all is that the things we talk about must be interesting. The games men have played and the songs they have sung, the delusions they have had and the victories and defeats they have experienced, the homes they have built and the clothing they have worn, the aberrations from which they have suffered and the soaring, inexpressible ideals they have served—all of these, in one way or another, go to make up the heritage which we as Americans have today, and all of these make up the field which we propose to cover in this magazine.

The fabric of American life is a seamless web. Everything fits in somewhere. History is a continuous process; it extends far back into the past, and it will go on—in spite of today’s uneasy qualms—far into the future. As editors of this magazine we can think of no more eternally fascinating task than that of examining this continuous process on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes we shall talk about great men and what they did, and sometimes we shall talk about the doings of wholly obscure people who made the great men possible. But always we intend to deal with that great, unfinished, and illogically inspiring story of the American people doing and being and becoming. Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end, it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.

.

History and story: When "folklore and fact collide"

At the end of my hep cat post the other week, I mentioned all too briefly Chris Barton's post at Bartography about fictionalized versions of history in children's picture books. If you didn't notice the mention or read it then, go read it now (and not too quickly either), and come on back.

Since we started homeschooling three years ago, I've noticed that one question that comes up often in various home education online groups is "How do I teach history when I don't know much myself?" or "Which books are accurate?" or "How do I know which books are accurate?" Usually parents ask about solid books with unimpeachable research that they, often lacking the knowledge themselves, can trust. There's no easy answer beyond doing your own homework and a lot of reading before you teach your kids.

I was reminded last week of this dilemma and Chris's post while reading The New York Times article, "In [Frederick] Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide" (as usual, try Bug Me Not if you don't want to bother with free registration at The Times):

At the northwest corner of Central Park, construction is under way on Frederick Douglass Circle, a $15.5 million project honoring the escaped slave who became a world-renowned orator and abolitionist.

Beneath an eight-foot-tall sculpture of Douglass, the plans call for a huge quilt in granite, an array of squares, a symbol in each, supposedly part of a secret code sewn into family quilts and used along the Underground Railroad to aid slaves. Two plaques would explain this.

The only problem: According to many prominent historians, the secret code — the subject of a popular book that has been featured on no less a cultural touchstone than “The Oprah Winfrey Show” — never existed. And now the city is reconsidering the inclusion of the plaques, so as not to “publicize spurious history,” Kate D. Levin, the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, said yesterday. ...

It’s “a myth, bordering on a hoax,” said David Blight, a Yale University historian who has written a book about Douglass and edited his autobiography. “To permanently associate Douglass’s life with this story instead of great, real stories is unfortunate at best.”

The quilt theory was first published in the 1999 book Hidden in Plain View, by Jacqueline Tobin, a journalist and college English instructor from Denver, and Raymond Dobard, a quilting and African textiles expert. It was based on the recollections of Ozella McDaniel Williams, a teacher in Los Angeles who became a quiltmaker in Charleston, S.C. “Ozella’s code,” the book says, was handed down from slave times from mother to daughter. Ms. Williams died in 1998.

In fact, one of the first books to suggest the idea of the quilt as a form of secret code is the 1993 children's fiction picture book, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson, who never tried to cloak her story as history (its follow-up, Under the Quilt of Night, is slightly less decisive). However, according to the Amazon page for the book, one reader's review of Sweet Clara states, "This is one of many books I purchased as a learning tool for the Education Committee of our local quilt guild. It's instrumental in showing our young people some of the history of quilting." Oh dear.

While there's certainly a place for folklore in history, it should always be identified as myth and not passed off as fact. Unfortunately, since the publication of both Sweet Clara and, six years later, Tobin's Hidden in Plain View, the idea of the quilt code has taken off as history and spawned, or has been included in, a number of children's books:

The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud

The Secret to Freedom by Marcia Vaughan

The Mystery on the Underground Railroad by Carole Marsh

The Underground Railroad for Kids: From Slavery to Freedom with 21 Activities by Mary Kay Carson

Even National Geographic, which should know better, perpetuates the myth in a lesson plan, telling teachers to "Have students look at pictures and (for advanced readers) read about African-American quilting traditions. Ask them to look for quilting practices that might have helped slaves teach each other about the routes to freedom. Have the students describe the quilts they see and discuss how these long-established African quilting traditions may have helped slaves in the United States understand how to use quilts to communicate. Ask students if they think they would be able to effectively communicate important ideas with quilts."

In these books, the line between fact and fiction is pretty blurred, not just for younger children who aren't yet able to conduct their own research or know yet to question the source but for their unknowing parents and teachers as well.

Home educating parents and classroom teachers alike often prefer a "living books" approach, since real stories, especially when they're beautifully illustrated, are a wonderfully engaging way to attract and hold children's interest in a subject, not to mention an easy way to liven up what is often dismissed as "dry and dusty" history. And both home educating parents and teachers can have trouble teasing the myth from history; according to The Times article, "The codes are frequently taught in elementary schools (teachers have been eager to take up the quilting-codes theory because of its useful pedagogic elements — a secret code, artwork and a story of triumph), and the patterns represent a small industry within quiltmaking."

As Shelley Pearsall, who writes children's historical fiction, notes at the very worthwhile and comprehensive Underground Railroad Quilt website (for more on this site keep reading, below):

[The "Quilt Code"] enables schools to keep from tackling the realities of the runaway slave experience. I think it also diminishes the incredible courage, guts, and individual determination the journey required. There were no quilts -- there was hunger, there was fear, there was illness, there was bad weather, there was frequent misinformation and losing your way -- it was not a lovely journey of hopping from one quilt pattern to the next.

Mentioned just above, a solid source of information on the myth of the quilt code is Leigh Fellner's Underground Railroad/Quilt website, a "greatly expanded" version of Fellner's March 2003 article for Traditional Quiltworks magazine, and one of the few websites I've ever come across with a bibliography. Be sure to scroll all the way down on the website's main page. I've had this site bookmarked for a while, and was glad to see it included in J.L. Bell's Boston 1775 post on The Times article -- where Bell also notes that "there are many elementary school lesson plans about the 'quilt code,' despite all the serious historical questions" (and don't miss his paper on “grandmothers’ stories” of the Revolution). I'm pleased to see that Fellner updated the website as recently as last month. It includes a wealth of information, with a variety of links and the aforementioned bibliography/list of resources, including links to the article, Young Readers at Risk: Quilt Patterns and the Underground Railroad by Deborah Foley of Culver Academies; primary sources from the University of North Carolina, Library of Congress, and elsewhere; and, also from Culver Academies, a lesson plan of "Search Strategies for Researching the Lives of African Americans".

Beyond the quilt code myth, an excellent choice for adults is Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory edited by the aforementioned Dr. Blight of Yale, who specializes in historical memory; some of his other books include Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory and Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War.

In a similar vein as Passages to Freedom but meant for children is Freedom Roads: Searching for the Underground Railroad by Joyce Hansen, Gary McGowan (published in 2003 by Cricket Books), mentioned by JoVE the other day; she writes,

"While the topic is the underground railroad (and it appears to have lots of good historical information on that), the approach is very focused on how historians know what they know. Each chapter looks at a different type of evidence and assesses its value and how it would be used by historians. I only skimmed the book but it looks like it is well presented with lots of pictures of actual artifacts, record books, etc. It also deals with how historians use a variety of sources to build up a picture of what happened."

I haven't seen the book but I'm intrigued and would be interested to hear from JoVE, Mother Crone, and others who've read and used it with children. According to the Booklist review at Amazon, "the authors examine the origins and development of the Underground Railroad, with a special focus on the varieties and limitations of historical evidence. ... Valuable as much for its approach as for its specific topic." A good lesson to learn regardless of the historical event or era.

Memory is a funny thing. Modern impressions of some events -- such as the quilt code or, say, Pickett's charge at the Battle of Gettysburg -- are based on myths and legends rather than on historical evidence. The interesting part, of course, is learning how and why those myths and legends arose in the first place, and then changed over time. Speaking of Pickett's charge, Pickett's Charge in History and Memory by Carol Reardon is terrific book (and just out in paperback). Yes, Reardon is a military historian, so you might be thinking of edging your way toward the nearest exit or at least a more popular David McCullough title. But give her book a chance if you're interested in how to teach and learn history. It's hard to find a better lesson about primary sources, how memory even indavertently manipulates public opinion, and the dangers of accepting even primary accounts of historical events as truth, colored as they can be by personal biases.

Other good books and articles:

The classic mystery novel The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, published in 1952. Tey's protagonist, Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, spends the entire book in a hospital bed. Where, bored by his confinement, he becomes fascinated with a portrait of Richard III and decides to delve into the mystery of the murder of the little princes in the Tower and the accuracy of Shakespeare's portrayal of the murderous hunchback. As Grant discovers, it's the victors who tend to write history.

Would JFK Have Pulled Us Out of Vietnam?: A tantalizing archival discovery suggests the perils of historical evidence, an article by Sheldon M. Stern, director of the American History Project for High School Students at the John F. Kennedy Library

Also by Sheldon Stern, the article Evidence! Evidence! All You People Talk about is Evidence!, at the Organization of American Historians website; the article was originally published in the March 1998 issue of History Matters!, the newsletter of the National Council for History Education.

Lesson plans from the Library of Congress, including The Historian's Sources and Using Primary Sources in the Classroom

Hardhat History, a website established by Professor Tom Isern originally for his undergraduate and graduate students at North Dakota State University "in their development as historical scholars".

James (Lies My Teacher Teacher Told Me) Loewen's Tips for Teachers, including Ideas for Dealing with Textbooks, Books and Periodicals Suggesting Alternate Approaches in History Teaching, Teaching American History Through Imaginative Literature ("American literature usefully ties in with American history, so long as that literature is historically accurate," writes Loewen), and more.

The American Historical Association's Guidelines for the preparation, evaluation and selection of history textbooks

And finally, even if you haven't discovered the writings of Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died recently, this appreciation today by Verlyn Klinkenborg of The New York Times:

Where does the truth of history lie? In coups and revolutions, in wars and treaties and the chronicles of our textbook heroes and antiheroes? Or does it lie in the pulse of ordinary life, in a dailiness that looks almost hallucinatory if you venture outside it? I think of Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died at 74 on Jan. 23, as an emissary between those two versions of history. His writing life divides between the conventional reporting he did for the Polish press agency PAP — a voluntary slavery, as he described it, that made the whole world available to him — and the literary journalism that has found its way into books like Imperium, The Soccer War and The Emperor.

He was both witness and reporter, and an enduring reminder of the fact that the two are not the same.

Read the last bit here, and read some Ryszard, too.

Updated, as I'm still going through The Times (in between bouts of wrestling the basement into shape before our departure and beginning to pack), to add today's op-ed piece, "History's Tangled Threads," by journalist and historian Fergus Bordewich in reply to last week's article. Mr. Bordewich is the author of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (2005). Also worth reading is his original blog post the other year on the myth and reality of the Underground Railroad.

Musical accompaniments for Ben and Me (and Davy Crockett, too)

I was at Amazon looking for a CD version of the old LP Davy Crockett -- Western Adventures with Fess Parker, Buddy Ebsen, and Gene Autry when I chanced upon Davy Crockett's Fiddle, music from Crockett's time performed on Crockett's own fiddle by Dean Shostak, who began playing violin at Colonial Williamsburg at age of 14. About 15 years ago, Mr. Shostak

became involved in the revival of the rare and beautiful glass armonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. Today, there are only eight glass armonica players in the world. Dean is credited with bringing the glass armonica to Williamsburg, where it was performed on many occasions over 200 years ago. Instead of using an electric motor to spin the glasses, Dean is the only glass armonica player since the 18th century to use a flywheel and foot treadle as Franklin originally designed.

Which made me think of JoVE and of my own Davy, and while he's a banjo fan, I think this would be mighty appealing for him.

And that led me to Mr. Shostak and friends performing Colonial Fair: Songs, Stories, and Riddles. From the Amazon website: "Humor, history and music come together on this new 55-minute recording as kids get a chance to hear unusual instruments like Ben Franklin's glass armonica, hurdy-gurdy, fife and drum and harpsichord, as well as sing along to favorites such as 'Yankee Doodle', 'Old King Cole', and 'Simple Simon'. Among the colorful characters kids will meet are merchants singing street cries, fortune tellers, and even fiddlers in a contest. Kids also get to test their wits by solving riddles taken from the 18th century."

And finally, for a Ben Franklin Christmas (no, not now -- save it for next Christmas), Mr. Shostak's Crystal Carols, traditional Christmas carols arranged for the glass armonica, with violin, piano and harp accompaniment.

Though, drat it all, can't seem to find any of them at either Amazon.ca or Chapters.ca. Will have to contact Mr. Shostak directly to inquire about Canadian distributors, or shipping to the north*.

* Thanks all for your kind (and warm) blizzard wishes. The kids and I are safe and indoors, though the wind is still blowing and the snow swirling around. It's all supposed to be over by the end of the day.

Seymour Martin Lipset, 1922-2006

The political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset died on New Year's Eve. Over his long and distinguished career, he wrote a great deal worth reading if one wants to understand the United States and its place in the world, including American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword.

But especially for Canadians, and American-Canadians, you can't do better than his Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada, published in 1989, which does a tremendous job explaining Americans to Canadians and themselves, and Canadians to Americans and themselves. In fact, with the kids beginning their studies about the American Revolution, I think it's time for me to pull those two of the shelves for a rereading.

On to the Revolution

Since the kids are about to start their study of the Revolutionary War for history, I was delighted to see that J.L. Bell at Boston 1775 today posted an entry on Boston's Expanding Borders -- his plans over the next few days to "highlight some free online resources that relate to Revolutionary New England". Nifty, and perfect timing.

I'll have to check through Boston 1775's archives and the sidebars for other good links we can use. Many thanks to J.L. Bell for this fine resource.

Remembrance: "Nothing forgotten"

Not as well known as John McCrae or erstwhile Canadian (by virtue of his service in the RCAF) John Gillespie Magee, Jr., Canadian poet, writer, and radio broadcaster Mona Helen McTavish Gould deserves to be remembered as well, not only for the lyrical poem she wrote about her brother, Lt. Col. Gordon Howard McTavish of the Royal Canadian Engineers, after he was killed in 1942.

This Was My Brother
by Mona Gould (1908-1999)

This was my brother
At Dieppe,
Quietly a hero
Who gave his life
Like a gift,
Withholding nothing.

His youth....his love....
His enjoyment of being alive...
His future, like a book
With half the pages still uncut --

This was my brother
At Dieppe...
The one who built me a doll house
When I was seven,
Complete to the last small picture frame,
Nothing forgotten.

He was awfully good at fixing things,
At stepping into the breach when he was needed.

That's what he did at Dieppe;
He was needed.
And even death must have been a little ashamed
At his eagerness!

From Tasting the Earth, 1943, via my battered paperback of the apparently equally out-of-print A Pocketful of Canada, edited by John D. Robins with wood engravings by Laurence Hyde.

*****

On Wednesday the kids and I watched the National Film Board movie, John McCrae's War: In Flanders Fields; highly recommended for learning more about the man behind the poem, as well as the horrors of war (though suitable even for young children).

We're off shortly for services at the town cenotaph, and then at Legion Hall.

Children's history book bonanza

I've been behind in my blog reading as well as posting about the good tidbits I've come across, so I'll start now. Consider it my belated Canadian Thanksgiving gift or early Halloween treat.

Chris Barton at Bartography has a post, U.S. History is for the birds, where Chris explains why he and his kids are going to continue their picture book study of American history but change from a chronological approach to a more thematic one. And the current theme is birds (something I can appreciate, with three kids who wanted to have "Bird School" all summer), with some terrific titles, including The Bald Eagle's View of American History by first-time children's author and stamp collector C.H. Colman and illustrated by Joanne Friar.

Karen at lightingthefires has a post stuffed with suggested Canadian historical fiction picture books, and if the books in that list aren't enough, she closes with a few other lists for good measure. I see some old favorites on Karen's list, and some exciting new prospects.

Then, there's the unflagging Fuse #8, in a category all by herself, who's been on a historical fiction roll that I hope isn't coming to an end anytime soon. These are all new titles, brand new for 2006. For each title, listed in no particular order, I've put the link to Fuse #8's review first, followed by a link to the book itself:

Review of Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Lawson, about Hattie, age sixteen in 1917 and an orphan with her own Montana homestead.

Review of Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium by Carla Killough McClafferty

Review of Escaping into the Night by D. Dina Friedman, about a young Jewish girl's escape from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Review of A True and Faithful Narrative by Katherine Sturtevant, set in Restoration England

Review of Desperate Journey by Jim Murphy, set in the early days along the Erie Canal.

Review of Porch Lies: Tales of Slicksters, Tricksters, and Other Wily Characters by Patricia McKissack; not exactly historical fiction, but sounds like a dandy yarn with good pictures to boot.

Review of Hero of the High Seas: John Paul Jones and the American Revolution by Michael L. Cooper; from National Geographic Children's Books.

Review of Bread and Roses, Too by Katherine Paterson, inspired by the 1912 "Bread and Roses strike" in the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Review of The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages, set in 1943, about young Dewey Kerrigan whose father has been working in Los Alamos on a top secret and mysterious “gadget” that will help America win the war.

Review of The Wonder Kid by George Harrar, set in the 1950's and touching on the golden era of comic books, polio, and fallout shelters.

Review of Homefront by Doris Gwaltney; life for 12-year-old Margaret Ann, who lives in a small southern town during WWII, is difficult enough even before the arrival of her pretty but scheming English cousin.

Thanks, all!

Proud mother moment

Had word over the weekend that seven-year-old Daniel's story about the Charter Oak had won author Jennifer Armstrong's first writing contest just for homeschoolers; the contest had been the kids' writing project for the month of September, a way of easing them back into school and writing with a fun assignment. The prize is an autographed copy of Jennifer's new book, The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History, which makes all of us here very, very excited. Daniel, my hockey fan, is especially thrilled that Jennifer promised to mail the book from Detroit, home of the Red Wings. Thank you, so much, Jennifer! This is the second writing contest Daniel has won this year, and a big boost for a boy who most times would rather be outside with a penknife rather than a pen.

Jennifer has been busy lately; besides two new books and all of the associated travelling, which you can read about at her main blog, she has revamped her website and started a new blog just for contests (bookmark and Blogline it!) with the promise of new contests each month.

Reading your way through American history with picture books

Kids' author and home educating dad Chris Barton (husband to Redneck Mother, too) the other day posted his most recent American history picture book reading list for children, for 1925-1975, along with -- and this is the very, very good part -- all of the previous lists and their wrap-ups, from Prehistory-1621 (list and wrap-up) to 1975-the Present (list and wrap-up).

Makes a great Master List for a fun family project, and if you start now you just might make it to the Pilgrims in time for Thanksgiving! Thanks very much for sharing, Chris.

Homeschool contest: Tell your favorite American history story

and you just might win a prize!

If this sounds like a fun way to kick off your family's new school year, not to mention a nifty writing assignment for the kiddies, Jennifer Armstrong, author of the new history title, The American Story, wants you. Details of Ms. Armstrong's new contest just for homeschoolers are here, and as she writes, "Have fun! Writing about history is a blast!" Ten winners will receive an autographed copy of the book.

And did you notice that Jennifer Armstrong's new blog is called Just for Homeschoolers? Color me impressed.

UPDATED to add: I'm feeling even more colorfully impressed this morning.

In order to form a more perfect Union

Crissy at Classical Home [she's now blogging here] is, quite rightly, still bothered that "Americans can more easily identify the Simpsons cartoon characters than the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment"*, as the BBC announced the other week.

To help remedy the current sorry state of affairs, Crissy writes,

I believe our children will learn what we offer, so let us offer this information.
Let's make it interesting. Fun, even.
But let us also help our children to understand how important it is to know our Constitution.
They will be far more likely, as voters, to give up these rights and freedoms if they don't know what they are.

and offers several links, including The U.S. Constitution Online. To which I'll add, for the youngest kids, Shh! We're Writing the Constitution by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Tomie dePaola; A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution by Betsy and Giulio Maestro; and ...If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution by Elizabeth Levy and illustrated by Joan Holub. Handy for homeschooling parents is The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution by Linda R. Monk.

And just in time, So Many Books reviews A Box of Longing with Fifty Drawers: A Revisioning of the Preamble to the Constitution by poet Jen Benka. This slim volume is made up of one poem, in sequence, for each of the 52 words that comprise the Preamble to the Constitution. Here are the first three works/words:

WE

where were we during the convening
two hundred years ago or yesterday
we, not of planter class, but mud hands digging
where were we during the convening
our work, these words, are missing
the tired, the poor, waylaid
where were we during the convening
two hundred years ago or yesterday.

THE

the days wave into months
the sickness claims too many
the bodies overboard
the thick mist finally lifts
the sight of land at last.

PEOPLE

crushed dust thrown
across ocean
family bones
a name, my own.

Oops -- almost forgot, even after Stefanie at So Many Books reminded me that I, too, am of the Schoolhouse Rock generation who memorized the Preamble this way:

In 1787 I'm told
Our Founding Fathers did agree
To write a list of principles
For keepin' people free.

The U.S.A. was just startin' out.
A whole brand-new country.
And so our people spelled it out
The things that we should be.

And they put those principles down on
paper and called it the Constitution, and
it's been helping us run our country ever
since then. The first part of the
Constitution is called the Preamble and tells
what those Founding Fathers set out to do.

"We the people
In order to form a more perfect union,
Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
Provide for the common defense,
Promote the general welfare and
Secure the blessings of liberty
To ourselves and our posterity
Do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America."

* "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."