This year marked the 40th anniversary of my museum’s biggest event of the year, Candlelight. As part of the anniversary, we created a small exhibit and I researched the history of the event. One thing that surprised me was how quickly the key elements of the event came together: buildings decorated by community groups, performances [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Little Women’
Timeless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Anne of Green Gables, Betsy-Tacy, Christmas, Little House, Little Women, Roller Skates on December 23, 2011 | 1 Comment »
A New Year’s Wish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott on December 30, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Historians, even cultural historians, don’t usually pay a lot of attention to children’s literature. I learned this the hard way when I was working on my own (and only, so far!) article for a publication. I searched high and low for someone else that had done something similiar–using an author’s work to see how change [...]
Christmas Classics
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Betsy-Tacy, Christmas, Great Brain, lesson plan, Little House, Little Women, Roller Skates on November 8, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Though it’s not quite the holiday season yet, I’ve spent much of this morning reading Christmas scenes from various children’s books. For Candlelight (the museum’s biggest event of the year), I decided to create a pre-visit lesson plan for teachers visiting in December. And what better way to talk about how holidays have changed in [...]
Ordinary things
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Little Women, Louisa May Alcott on September 13, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Last week, I finished American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work by Susan Cheever. It’s an odd little book, full of lots of literary gossip and fluff and not much substance. But towards the end, there’s this passage: “Reading Little [...]
The best presents. . .
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Little Princess, Anne of Green Gables, Betsy and Joe, Christmas, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Heaven to Betsy, L. M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Maud Hart Lovelace, Roller Skates, Ruth Sawyer on December 22, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I admit it–my favorite part of Christmas just might be presents. And it’s not so much the receiving (though don’t get me wrong–I do love receiving), but the giving. It’s the joy in finding just the right thing, something that is more than the sum of its parts, and seeing the reaction when it hits its mark. [...]
Christmas won’t be Christmas. . .
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott on December 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This Christmas will be quite a bit smaller than usual. Of course, with the economy still in the doldrums, I don’t think I’m alone in this. But it’s not like things are quite to the point of Jo’s moan: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents!” Looking back at kidlit history, there are plenty of [...]
Pilgrimages
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Anne of Green Gables, Betsy-Tacy, historic sites, L. M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Maud Hart Lovelace on October 18, 2009 | 3 Comments »
This afternoon, while attempting to be domestic, I caught up with one of my favorite NPR programs, This American Life. A few weeks ago, they aired a new episode called “The Book That Changed Your Life.” How could I not listen? The entire show was fantastic, but I was particularly intrigued by Act 4: Little [...]
The Manifesto, so to speak
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Little Princess, All-of-a-Knd Family, Anne of Green Gables, Betsy-Tacy, children's literature, L. M. Montgomery, Little House, Little Women, Maud Hart Lovelace on August 30, 2009 | 14 Comments »
When I was a kid, I spent most of my time in the nineteenth century. It all started with the Little House books. My grandmother read them to me, and they became my very first chapter books that I could read all by myself. From there, it was just a hop, skip and jump to Little [...]
