With this issue of the Newsletter, we are initiating a new column for announcements and reviews of websites related to the history of children and youth. Share your favorite websites. Contact Jim (james.marten@marquette.edu) if you'd like to write the column for the next issue, Winter 2004.
WEBSIGHTINGS
James Marten, Marquette University
In this column—which different members of the Society will write for each issue—I want to describe briefly the contents of three websites that, each in its own way, contributes to the study of the history of children and youth.
The first is one that you are probably already familiar with: the Library of Congress's "American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library" (at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html). This constantly expanding collection of hundreds of thousands of documents and images (most are from the collections at the Library of Congress, although some are on "digital loan"—my term—from other archives) is easy to use and extraordinarily varied. And it's full of items related to children—although it might not seem so if one simply scrolls through the list of separate collections, none of which indicates a particular interest in young people. However, when "children" is punched into a simple search of the site, thousands of items appear (I found at least 5000), drawing on hundreds of collections and offering often obscure sources. Simply clicking on the title brings up a page with the full citation and provenance. Thumbnailed images can be enlarged (information on obtaining permission for using images is also provided) and documents can be read in their entirety (either as transcriptions or as image files). A random sample from the first twenty selections listed in the results of a search for "children" suggests the breadth of the collections and the sometimes quirky nature of the sources:
--Twenty-fourth annual report of the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children, for the year ending January 1, 1887 (Washington : Judd & Detweiler, Printers, 1887)—this is one of a number of annual reports for this turn-of-the-century social welfare organization.
--A digitized lantern slide of "Children riding burros" in New Mexico, late in the nineteenth century, from the Department of Special Collections at the University of Chicago Library.
--A children's schoolbook, no doubt written to inform American youngsters about one of the U. S.'s prizes from the Spanish American War: Marian Minnie George, A Little Journey to Puerto Rico; for Intermediate and Upper Grades (Chicago, A. Flanagan Company, 1900).
--A short 1935 letter by ten-year-old Billy Gobitas of Minersville, Pennsylvania, to his local school board, explaining why the young Jehovah's Witness refused to salute the American flag at school.
--An antebellum Sunday School publication from the early years of the American Sunday School Union: Rev. Robert May, A Voice from Richmond, and Other Addresses to Children and Youth (Philadelphia, American Sunday-School Union, 1842).
The New Deal Network contains many documents from a wide variety of archives related—sometimes rather tangentially—to the Great Depression. One of my favorites is "The Magpie Sings the Great Depression: Selections from DeWitt Clinton High School's Literary Magazine, 1929-1942" (at http://newdeal.feri.org/magpie/ ). Well organized and easy to use, the site contains stories and images from a legendary source of a diverse set of authentic children's voices, the literary magazine published at the famous Bronx high school. The site includes 195 pieces of poetry and prose and nearly 300 images (engravings, photographs, magazine covers). Although many of the sources deal with the youthful experiences during the Depression, there are also articles dealing with race relations in other parts of the United States, as well as the coming of the Second World War. James Baldwin got his start writing for The Magpie, but the value of the site is found more in the voices of the unknown students who found in the magazine a way to express themselves. In addition to the documents and images, the site includes ideas for using "The Magpie Sings the Great Depression" in class and a brief bibliography of print and on-line sources. The contents can be searched by year, author and artist, and subject.
Finally, if you can stand the didacticism and narrow subject matter, a really useful site is "Nineteenth-Century American Children & What They Read" (at http://www.merrycoz.org/MAGS4.HTM#folks). Compiled and administered by Pat Pflieger and unconnected to any archive or other institution, the site contains material from a number of nineteenth century children's magazines (including several pretty famous ones), including The Youth's Companion, Parley's Magazine, The Student and Schoolmate, Our Young Folks, and The Little Corporal. Although not specifically about the sectional conflict, the articles sampled on this site (there are several dozen) do tend to be focused on the mid-century, and a number do talk about facets of the war. Breaking the pattern of famous, widely circulated magazines is The Slave's Friend, an abolitionist newspaper; only a few issues from the 1830s have survived, and they are included in their entirety. This is hardly a comprehensive look at children's literature in the nineteenth century, but it does provide very representative examples of the kinds of articles, stories, and puzzles and words games that appeared during this period just before the "Golden Age" of children's magazines. In addition, the site features the evolution of the graphics that appeared on the covers of the magazines, as well as a few illustrations.
