In the early modern era, Spanish missionaries, cosmographers, chroniclers, and physicians wrote major studies on botany, ethnography, navigation, Indigenous languages, war, and history, aided by capable, though often reluctant, Indigenous informants. They penned this rich body of scholarship using iron gall ink -- a mixture of tannins, sulfates,…

Eleanor Roosevelt (ER), niece of President Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), was so revered that towns were named in her honor; she advocated for so many causes for so many people across most every continent that space prevents compilation. Now imagine young students' reactions upon discovering that the…

State and national education initiatives provide American students with opportunities to engage in close readings of complex texts from diverse perspectives as they actively construct complicated understandings as they explore complex texts. Opportunities for interdisciplinary units emerge as the role of non-fiction in English/language arts and…

Teaching book history as the story of its development as an artifact is undoubtedly important. However, placing that history more prominently within the social contexts of reading and libraries seems crucial to one's understanding of book history, since books are both the continuing means of social practices (such as reading), and since they…

Looks at the value of historical novels to children. (Editor)

Children who take avid pleasure in history told as a good story more often than not forsake it as adults. History has too often ceased to be a good story and become simply analytical, arid, tedious. (Author)