Top of page

Discovering Elements of Urban Culture in America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century from a Children’s Book

Share this post:

This post is by Lee Ann Potter, Director of Educational Outreach at the Library of Congress.

The Rocket Book
The Rocket Book

In the May/June 2016 issue of Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, our “Sources and Strategies” article featured The Rocket Book, a children’s book published in 1912.

The details contained in both the story’s prose and its illustrations—from the names and occupations of the tenants to the pastimes and inventions depicted—provide a unique glimpse of urban life in America in the early years of the twentieth century.

We suggested:

  • reading The Rocket Book aloud, then providing small groups of students with individual pages from the book to analyze what they observe, reflect upon, and question;
  • inviting students to share their work;
  • writing their responses on the board (or including them in a shared electronic document), and identifying categories that reflect elements of culture; and
  • leading a discussion about urban culture in America at the turn of the twentieth century; asking students to consider what details might be the same or different in a similarly-themed child’s book written today, or one written 50 years earlier; and asking to what extent they think the scenes depicted in The Rocket Book were typical in American cities at the time it was published.

Then, we suggested extending this activity by encouraging student research into the Progressive era, or, more specifically, into the activities of Jacob Riis  and Lewis Hine; and directing students to compare and contrast The Rocket Book’s contents with the information from the other sources they discovered.

Riis bannerFinally, we alerted readers to additional children’s books available from the Library of Congress , and the new Story Bug app that launched at the Library in January.

What strategies involving historic children’s books have you used with your students?

 

Comments (4)

  1. I love how the LOC, in their blogs will have links to other resources with suggestions such as using the linked resources to compare and contrast with the original resource.

  2. WOW! There is just no end to all the links to resources which can be utilized for some many teaching ideas.

  3. Love the content and links to so many resources!

  4. I love that there are so many resources with links right to them!

Add a Comment

This blog is governed by the general rules of respectful civil discourse. You are fully responsible for everything that you post. The content of all comments is released into the public domain unless clearly stated otherwise. The Library of Congress does not control the content posted. Nevertheless, the Library of Congress may monitor any user-generated content as it chooses and reserves the right to remove content for any reason whatever, without consent. Gratuitous links to sites are viewed as spam and may result in removed comments. We further reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to remove a user's privilege to post content on the Library site. Read our Comment and Posting Policy.


Required fields are indicated with an * asterisk.