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Center for the Study of Children's
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Transcripts for October 1999 Programs #25-45 |
Program #25
1 October 1999 -- E.B. White's Death Intro.
(Sound cut. See: mini-disc JC #1 - Track 8) That's E.B. White reading the startling opening sentences from his 1952 classic, Charlotte's Web. This is one of the most remarkable beginnings in all of children's literature, and it reminds us that this book is about some pretty harsh realities. Indeed, the whole book is about saving Wilbur, the runt pig of the litter, from a quick and sure demise. Not since Jody had to sacrifice his pet deer, Flag, in The Yearling, or Bambi lost his mother to the hunters' bullets, or The Little Prince kept his appointment with the serpent had death made such a sudden and unequivocal entrance in an modern children's book -- especially an American children's book. In fact, in the post World War II world, with the final arrival of aspects of Freudian psychology on these shores, there was a real concern not to risk "traumatizing" children. And what could be more traumatizing, the argument ran, than depictions of death? Fairy tales came under attack and were sanitized or excluded from the reading lists. And then along came White in the early 1950s and changed the dynamics of what could or should be written for children about such subjects. In his unflinchingly honest approach to this material, he also created a work that appealed not only to children but to the adults who first read this book to children as, perhaps, the first serious chapter book that parents and children share together. Reading this book together is one of the indellible experiences of parenting because the book is perfectly pitched to both an adult's and a child's ears and sensibilities. But when they reach the death that finally arrives at the end of the book, both adults and children invariably "loose it" together. White brings parents and children to the point where they can experience grief together, which in itself is no small accomplishment for an artist. But White doesn't stop there. He takes us further, to see that any death is part of a larger whole, and that even in its aching sadness, there are glimmers of life's joyful promises: the barn will still smell of manure and straw, and a small, bright, new spider will drop into it. E. B. White, for whom clarity was a supreme virtue, died of Alzheimer's disease today in 1985. And because of this book, that loss, every loss is somehow a little more bearable. Recess is a co-production of The University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media. Thanks to Jerre Conner, Helane Davis, Rosie Russo for helping to research these shows. For Transcripts and additional information about these programs, visit our web site at w w w . recess . ufl . edu
Program #26
4 October 1999 -- Child Health Day
This is John Cech, and this is "Recess." We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.
Today is Child Health Day -- a good time to take a look at a few of the books that are being published for children about their biological states of being. Perhaps I should warn you that what's meant today by "health," is not the same thing that most of us remember from those middle school lectures that made our gym teachers so nervous. The current trend is an anything-goes, tell-it-like it is, tell-it- like the Europeans and others have been telling it for generations. With our Puritain roots, we Americans have been notoriously timid about such talk, until rather recently.
It took a consortium of West German churches in the mid-1970s, to start this conversation when they published a book called Show Me, which attempted to deal, in the frankest possible terms and photographs, with the subject of human sexuality in a work intended for children. The uproar surrounding the book's publication in the States touched off a number of court battles and eventually led to legislation that bans the book in this country.
About ten years later, the Germans gave us another moral pretzle-bender of a book. It was called About the Little Mole Who Wanted to Know Who did It On His Head; it told the tale of a hapless Mole in an aubergine jumpsuit who sticks his head out of his burrow one morning only to have one of the creatures in the barnyard dump a scatalogical calling card on his head. The Little Mole spends the rest of the book questioning the other animals about and then carefully observing their evacuatory habits -- all this in graphic detail with onomotopoetic word play.
American authors and publishers finally took the que, and soon produced not only a translation of the Little Mole book (which I never thought I'd see), but also other books from home and abroad that followed a similar theme -- books like Everybody Poops, Once Upon a Potty, The Gas that We Pass, and The Toilet Book, which comes equipped with a audio chip that makes every living room sound like Archie Bunker's.
I suppose it was inevitable that the next step would be into the discipline that one publisher calls "Grossology" -- in a book that has a puddle of plastic baby barf on its front cover instead of a dust jacket. The back cover of the book tells the would-be scholar of this subject: "Sometimes its stinky. Sometimes its crusty. And sometimes its slimy. But hey, it's your body."
These are the things that children have been joking about with each other for eons, just out of ear-shot of the adults, and certainly not in books. That would have spoiled the fun. I'm for almost every kind of dialogue, but as the public crassification of our culture slouches toward the new millenium, oh, my do I long for the good old days, when some things could be left unsaid in polite society, and kids could still keep their tribal discourse a well-known secret among themselves.
Recess is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media.
Program #27
5 October 1999 -- "Conundrums" A Rita Smith: A Lost and Found
Essay
Program #28
6 October 1999 -- Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel
This is John Cech and this is "Recess."
(Use noises from Disc # / track / and fade out as the piece begins)
I am standing at a part of the Big Dig near the Haymarket in Downtown Boston where they're rebuilding a major link in the interstate highway system underground, something that might even be beyond the power of those champion diggers, Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Mary Anne. There's going to be a lot of celebrating in the area next month when the city declares November 13th Mike Mulligan Day, and Houghton Mifflin, the revered publishing and and a host of area libraries will be throwing birthday parties in honor of Virginia Lee Burton's classic picture book, which is sixty years old this fall. We thought we'd let you know early, just in case you want to go.
Virginia Lee Burton was born and raised in the Boston area. Her father was the first dean at M. I. T. and her mother a musician and poet. She studied art and dance in California and returned East in her early twenties. When she was 21, she married the sculptor George Demetrios, and together they were part of the artistic community of Cape Ann, near Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she was the guiding spirit of the Folly Cove Designers, an arts and crafts movement, famed for its textiles.
The Folly Cove designs, with their strong, swirling, folkloric patterns found their way into Virginia Lee Burton's children's books -- especially works like The Little House, Life Story, and Mike Mulligan, which Ms. Burton dedicated to her son Michael, who was four at the time. He is the little blonde boy in the book who comes to the rescue of the adults and finds the answer to the problem that is puzzling everyone at the end of the book -- how to get Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel out of the perfect hole they have dug for the foundation of Popperville's new town hall.
No wonder this fable about how personal pluck and determination can beat the odds (and new-fangled technology) has stayed around for six decades -- we all have a soft spot for the underdog, a national quality that was brought into sharp definition during the Great Depression of the 1930s when this book first appeared. And there is something else about this book that echoes that time, of Busby Berkely and Astaire and Rogers -- boy, can Ms. Burton's pictures dance, casting in their wake triumphant clouds of steam and grace, of joyful work and bright, clear energy.
(Go out with some music from the CD)
Thanks today to Anita Silvey and Stephanie McLaughlin, and to Houghton Mifflin Publishers. "Recess" is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT - FM and the Center for the Study of Children Literature and Media. For further information about these programs, visit our web site at: w w w . recess . ufl . edu
Program #29
7 October 1999 -- The Mozart Effect
(After credits, lead with a short segment from Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos played by Murray Perahia & Radu Lupu)
This is the music that may make your score, on average, 8 or 9 points higher on a section of the Stanford Binet I. Q. test -- according to three University of California at Irvine researchers. This is the music of the Mozart Effect, that has gotten quite a bit of attention of late, just do a keyword search on the internet and you'll find enough intriguing material on the music-mind connection to keep you reading all weekend.
The argument, thorougly oversimplified of course, is that Mozart's or other classical music will make you measurably brighter. And if it will do this for the average college student, just imagine what it will do for infants? The research ultimately prompted a 1998 proposal by the Governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, to send a CD of classical music home with every newborn in the Peach State -- and he even persuaded record companies to donate music for the Georgia CD.
It didn't take long for the companies themselves to begin producing their own compilations of the music of Mozart and other composers, and in the past year or so, there's been an exponential growth of classical CD's for kids that promise that their music will at least help, to borrow the title of one of these CD's, to "Build Your Baby's Brain." This particular CD comes with instructions for everything from helping to limber up a baby's muscles (in time with the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro), to letting your toddler tap out ryhthms with a wooden spoon to the "Rondo Alla Turca."
- 2 -
(Mini Disc JC#4, Track 15 ) .
But my favorite is, again to quote the CD notes, "when fatigue or hunger makes your baby's universe seem to fall apart, Mozart can help to restore order." and they offer three tracks to "settle things down." Here's part of one, a section of the Cavatina that's recommended as a perfect accompaniment for strained carrots or casava.
(Mini Disc JC #4, Track 16)
The workings of music, I think, will always remain mysterious, but if we need to argue that we'll have smarter kids if they listen to (and learn to play), say, Mozart's G-minor quintet, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and this helps to put music programs back in the curriculum of every elementary, middle, and high school in this country, then so be it. Because music like this will also help to do something equally important for our children: open their hearts and deepen their souls.
(Mini Disc JC #4, Track 17, esp. the part that runs from about 1. 20 to the end of the track)
Program #30
8 October 1999 -- National Children's Day
Some folks in California are trying to revive a tradition today that began back in 1892, when the Pledge of Allegiance was first recited by schoolchildren across America in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of what was then referred to as Columbus' "discovery" of America.
The Pledge was, most probably, written by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and a Christian Socialist, who was working as a kind of public relations assistant to Daniel Ford, the dynamic editor of one of the most powerful magazines of the time, The Youth's Companion, which by the 1890s had a circulation approaching half a million, making it one of the largest weekly magazines in the country, with a readership of both young people and adults.
The Youth's Companion was interested in promoting a National Public School Celebration to coincide with the Columbus Quadricentennial in order to honor the nation's public schools, which a young politician named Teddy Roosevelt called "the leading form in which the principles of equality and fraternity take shape." Benjamin Harrison, the President of the United States at the time, supported this joint celebration, and in his proclamation of these events he too praised America's public schools noting that they were "in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment."
The Youth's Companion provided all the schools with a program for the ceremony, complete with the texts of speeches to be given. It even recommended how to say the Pledge. The children were supposed to salute and repeat the pledge and "at the words, 'to my Flag,' the magazine instructed, "the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, towards the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation, whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side. Then, still standing, as the instruments strike a chord, all will sing, "America, My Country 'tis of Thee." -- the unofficial children's national anthem at the time.
Always marching to the tune of their own drummer, New York City was the first place where the pledge was said during its own, three-day Columbus celebration held early in October that year. After say the Pledge, tens of thousands of schoolchildren paraded down Fifth Avenue past the reviewing stands, while half a million parents, many of them immigrants, watched . . . . and cheered.
Can we find a recording of "America" sung by children to go out on?
Thanks today to Dr. John W. Baer for his superb research on the Pledge, which he has published on the Web. Thanks for production help this week to Henry Pensis and Richard Drake; to Mary Showstark and Joshua Krause for their help researching these programs; and to Noah Bate for helping get them online. "Recess" is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT - FM and the Center for the Study of Children Literature and Media. For further information about these programs, visit our web site at: w w w . recess . ufl . edu
Program #31
11 October 1999 -- Mason Locke Weems' Birthday: American
Myths
This is John Cech, and this is "Recess." We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.
Mason Locke Weems was born today in 1759. He was an ordained Anglican minister -- hence the name he's most frequently known by, "Parson Weems." But he soon abandoned that calling for something more lucrative. He sold books, from village to village, town to town, from his home base in Maryland, and he quickly recognized a niche market that was ripe for the plucking: writiing and selling the biographies of American heroes that our brand new nation was yearning for. Always alert to a business opportunity, Parson Weems was happy to oblige -- and he'd even throw in a fiddle tune for good measure from the back of the wagon that held his travelling bookstore.
In 1800, in his early forties, Weems published the volume that made him famous: The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen. The volume would go through 29 editions before Weems died in 1825, and it would become, in the eyes of at least one historian, "perhaps the most widely read, most influential book ever written about American history."
Weems didn't want to write about the founding father, demi-god Washington, who had already been the subject of a major (and majorly unsuccessful) biography. "Oh, no!" Weems wrote, "give us his private virtues! In these every youth is interested, because every youth may become a Washington -- a Washington in piety and patriotism, -- in industry and honor -- and consequently a Washington, in what alone deserves the name, Self Esteem and Universal Respect."
Because he couldn't find the actual stories of these private virtues, Weems simply made them up -- the prophetic dream that G. W.'s mother has the night before he is born, the cherry tree story, the cabbages planted by George's father to spell the boy's name and illustrate a moral allegory, the tossing of the dollar across the river. Historians knew even then that these were pure fabrications, and they said so. But their expert opinions didn't matter to the tens of thousands, and ultimately the millions who heard in the stories the ring of another kind of truth, the truth of myth, those stories that we can't get out of our heads, no matter how hard we try. Never mind if they're fictions. They're so good, so deeply set in our national nature that they must be true. And in that realm, young George will be forever swinging his little hatchet and confessing to his father, he'll be forever a little unruly and a bit the revolutionary, and he'll be forever forgiven his youthful indiscretions.
"Recess" is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT - FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media.
Program #32
12 October 1999 -- Jim Haskins Commentary: Alice Childress
Alice Childress was a woman of firsts. Born on October 12th in Charleston, South Carolina in 1920 and raised in New York City, in 1952 she went on to write the first play by an African American woman to be professionally produced in New York, and in 1956 she became the first woman ever to win an Obie award for a best original off-Broadway play. Along with being a playwright, she was also an actor and a director. But she didn't stop there. She wrote screenplays and a newspaper column, essays and feature articles, and fiction for young people and for adults. She acknowledged that it might look like she got "caught up in a fragmentation of writing skills. But an idea comes to me in a certain form and, if it stays with me, must be written out or put in outline form before I can move on to the next event. I sometimes wonder about writing in different forms; could it be that women are used to dealing with bits and pieces of life and do not feel as compelled to specialize?"
She is perhaps best remembered today for her novel for young adults, A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich, which was published in 1973. It received wide-spread critical acclaim at the time, including a nomination for the National Book Award, and was almost as quickly, she reported, "the first book banned in a Savannah, Georgia school library since Catcher in the Rye." And the book is still being contested or banned somewhere in the country every year because of its unflinching portrayal of the life of a teen-age drug addict who is trying to kick his habit. This book was decades ahead of its time, and it is still as powerful today as it was when it was written over a quarter of a century ago. The novel did not oversimplify its view of the life of a troubled teenager, but rather depicted the complexity of his world and the difficulty of finding authentic heroes who will inspire real change. Jim,
Here are some possibilities for the last paragraph. It just needs to be one or two sentences long, with a brief anecdote, or something she said, or something she did that left an indelible impression on you, or something general about her that you remember. The following might work as a transitional sentence to begin the last paragraph:
For me, Alice Childress was one of those heroes who worked tirelesslessly on behalf of...
OR
What I remember most about Alice Childress, who I met numerous times in New York was...
Program #33
13 October 1999 -- School Lunch Week
This is "Recess" and this is John Cech. It's School Lunch Week and the kids on the playground aren't singing about the joys of macaroni and cheese or yogurt and fruit, or even pizza with four toppings. When I asked them what they'd like for lunch -- what they'd really, really like -- for lunch they burst into song. What they sang about may not be well-balanced, and one of the ingredients certainly isn't legal for kids, and I know they didn't ask Jimmy Buffet for permission, but here's what they told me without teachers, parents, or nutritionists nearby:
Mini-Disc JC#1, track 14
Now that's a lunch to dream about. And they probably need to have an anthem like that to sing together and rouse their spirits because what they're going to meet in their lunchrooms is seldom that. Rather than a cheeseburger in Paradise, it's more like mystery meat in the Underworld. It's one of the things that most of us want to forget about school, or that we end up joking about. Remember some of the rhymes about food and school we used to say, like "On Top of Spaghetti"? Mary and Herb Knapp have recorded dozens of parodies like these in their book about children's folklore called , One Potato, Two Potato which is subtitled: "The Secret Education of American Children." I'll spare you any recitations, since you may be eating.
But in honor of the week, I've one recipe for this generally negative opinion about school lunches that remains, despite all the good efforts of those hard-working folks in school cafeterias across America. Here it is: Once a week, let kids do what they'd really like to do with their food most of the time: mess around with it. Give them each a copy of Joost Elffers' wonderful book, Play With Your Food, and let them take their cues from him, turning peeled bananas into octopii, pears into teddy bears, and mushroom caps into Michelin men; let the kids become, for a day, a cafeteria full of young Archimboldos, finding faces in green peppers, and making turtles from watermelon rinds, ants from cherries, and catytdids from okra. Ah, now can't you hear a different song starting to find its melody?
Recess is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media. For information about these programs, visit our web site at w w w . recess . ufl . edu.
Program #34
14 October 1999 -- Elaine Needelman: Freaks, Geeks, and Other New
Live-Action Fall T.V. Shows
This is "Recess" and this is John Cech. With most of the new television shows for children and teenagers on the air, here's Elaine Needelman with the second of her reviews to help us sort things out.
There seems to be an incredible number of tv shows this fall about teenagers. At least 17 new shows feature major teen characters. if you include returning series like "Felicity," "Dawson's Creek," "Party of Five," and "7th Heaven" there are about 20 hours of network prime time devoted to teen angst and other adolescent concerns.
The only new show on network television this season with a child as a main character is "Malcolm in the Middle." Malcom, played by Frankie Muniz, is a normal preteen kid who just happens to be very smart. The middle child in his family, he is horrified to find out that he has been classified as a genius at school. As he tells the camera and us frequently, sometimes outraged, sometimes embarrassed, he is a normal kid who just wants to watch cartoons in his underwear on Saturday morning -- but with his bizarre family, a kind of live-action Simpsons, that's hardly ever possible. This looks like a sharp-witted, funny show that we can look forwad to when it begins later in the winter.
NBC's "Freaks and Geeks" has a wonderful premise: have the teenagers actually look and act like real kids. They're not particularly cool; in fact, they're awkward and unpredictable. This hour-long comedy-drama focuses on the difficulties of adolescence for the outcasts of one high school. The "freaks" are Led Zepplin-loving burnouts and the "geeks" are athletically hopeless, science-fiction-reading loners, prime targets in sadistic dodgeball games and for the attacks of lunchroom bullies. It's an intelligent, poignant, frank and funny show -- too bad it's being aired on Saturday nites at 8:00 p.m. -- a lethal time slot.
"Roswell" at first looks like a combination of "The X-Files " and "Dawson's Creek." The show is about three orphaned space aliens living in Roswell, New Mexico, where their family's spaceship crashed years ago. The alien teens go to the local high school and do the best they can to fit in with everyone else -- except that they have extraordinary powers that have started people asking questions. It's a cleverly plotted, suspenseful show that just happens to be tapping into one of the universal conditions of adolescence -- feeling like you're from another planet. Now that's a perfect metaphor for this season's invasion of the teenagers.
Thanks for production help this week to Henry Pensis and Richard Drake; to Mary Showstark and Joshua Krause for their help researching these programs; and to Noah Bate for helping get them online. "Recess" is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT - FM and the Center for the Study of Children Literature and Media. For further information about these programs, visit our web site at: w w w . recess . ufl . edu
Program #35
15 October 1999 -- Shelley Frazer Mickle on Pet Peeves
Program #36
18 October 1999 -- Jim Haskins Commentary on Teen Read Week
This is "Recess" and I'm John Cech. This is Teen Read Week and we've asked Jim Haskins, one of our leading authors of books of non-fiction and biography for teenagers, for his thoughts about that perennial question: how do we get teens to read more in general and more challenging books in particular.
Teens are already reading. They just aren't reading the kinds of things we think they should be reading. They're reading magazines about the things they're interested in -- celebrities or style, sports or computers, popular music or movies. And they'll read these magazines from cover to cover, studying them, learning facts and details by heart. They'll memorize the lyrics of their favorite songs, somehow managing to decipher even the most obscure of texts . They'll join poetry chat rooms and read dozens of poems their peers have posted every night. They'll ponder the directions for computer games and digest the endless statistics of their favorite sport.
And when they aren't reading these things close to home, other activities are competing for their time: listening to music, going to movies, playing sports, working, going to school, hanging out with their friends. When they read actual books, it's usually for school assignments, or else it's something that their friends are reading -- the latest Stephen King perhaps, or the new Judy Blume -- or a book being pushed by the Internet, like Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which was published by MTV -- it's been through four printings to date and has gotten a lot of attention on-line, where young people are finding more and more of the information that guides their tastes and interests.
So what do we do as parents, educators, concerned adults? Of course, we do what we can. We have to keep buying them books or bringing them home from the library and leaving them on the coffee table for them to find. We have to read some of the books they're reading so that we can share some common reading ground with them. We have to keep writing books for them about people and subjects that are intesting to them. If I manage to write a good book about, say, Spike Lee, I hope that young people will trust what I'm doing enough to read a book I might write about Duke Ellington. We do what we can. We'd better. Because even though it may seem like we'll always be taking care of our teenagers, one day they'll be taking care of us.
Program #37
19 October 1999 -- Program for Teen Read Week
This is "Recess" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. One of the areas in which teens seem to be reading and writing more than ever is poetry. A new selection of poems by Naomi Shihab Nye called What Have you Lost? captures the emotions connected with loss -- of something or someone very close and important -- that teenagers, that all of us experience so deeply. Here's Naomi Shihab Nye reading a poem from this collection by a Swedish writer, Siv Cedering about the transition that teenagers make from childhood to young adulthood, a passage that is marked by loss in order to find that precious thing called identity.
The Changeling One day you see it clearly. You could not really be their child. Your parents would know it, if they could look inside you. Despite what relatives say about mother's nose or smile or father's eyes and toes, the mirror tells the truth; you are different. At first you try to hide the fact. You are glad you have been taken in and have a place to sleep, and eat. But soon, you no longer want their charity. You see through their affecvtion. You hear the phony note in the assurance that of course you are theirs, of course they love you. You know better. You look for a likeness in the faces of strangers. You search for kinship in books. You look at maps that can show you the way. You definitely know youa re not meant to do what your mother does, your father. Even your supposed siblings, however friendly and familiar, cannot understand what occupies your heart. So you choose to sleep under the bed or in the attic. You wish you had been left to be brought up by the wolves, or that the floating city will soon return to collect its lost children. You want your real parents to finally come, clutching the worn and torn documents fromt he orphanage, to embrace you with tear-stained faces. Meanwhile you wait, preparing. You study your chosen subject. You write your poems. You feed the original flame that burns inside you, because you know that is the only way you will get to live the life that is meant to be yours.
Thanks today to Naomi Shihab Nye, Siv Cedering, and Greenwillow Books, and to Ernie Villareal at Texas Public Radio. Recess is a Co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media.
Program #38
20 October 1999 -- Singing the Blues with Mr. Johnnie
Billington
(lead in with JC#4, a little from the beginning of track 9)
We're listening to a little of the closing day concert for a weeklong workshop that Mr. Johnnie Billington, a Master Folk Artist, has been holding here at the University of Florida to teach middle-school students how to play the blues. Many of the kids who particpated in this workshop never held a guitar, or a drumstick, or a microphone before, and Mr. Johnnie has been patiently working , playing, and singing with them. The first hurdle was to help them get that the blues was about, to use Mr. Johnnie's phrase, "what you don't have."
I asked him what got him involved playing for young people, after he had already had a career playing with many of the blues greats:
Track 12 @ 0.8 -- 12 @ 1.17 (to "twenty years ago") He started playing in the schools, and soon he was helping young people to form bands, and, as he puts it, doing the paperwork for the people in Washington so that he could find the means to continue to teach the blues in the schools of the Mississippi Delta.
Track 13 @ 4.22, "Oh, I'd like to do that . . . ." continue this into
Track 14 1.13
Track 14, 2.24 As I travel around this country, ....to thanks at end of track 3.48 Credit: Delta Blues Ed., John Rushey, Museum, James,.... curator of the University Museum for their help with this program.
Program #39
21 October 1999 -- Winnie- the-Pooh's Anniversary
It seems like we should be throwing some kind of party today, a big party with many jars of honey and Good Things To Eat, and cards inscribed with HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY. Because it's the 73rd anniversary of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh, and we should gorge ourselves enough to get stuck in a very tight place; we should take a balloon ride disguised as a cloud (but mind the bees); we should go rumbling down the road chanting "Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie" -- or perhaps a chorus of "Tra-la-la, tra-la, la ... Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum" -- or go hunting for heffalumps and woozles or set off on an Expotition to the North Pole It's a day for replacing lost tails and having unexpected baths, and making friends, and testing friendships, and learning something about ourselves and asking those imponderable questions like the bear of very little brain does:
On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
"Now is it true, or is it not,
"That what is which and which is what."
Maybe there's a certain Tao in that, but I don't think that Alan Alexander Milne meant it to be anything quite so esoteric when he wrote this follow up to the book of poems that he written a two years earlier, When We Were Very Young, that introduced characters, like Christopher Robin, named after his son, who would become the central, human chorus/anchor of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Milne was a witty, urbane, prolific, man of letters -- a playwright and novelist, an occasional poet and comic writer who just happened to write four children's books that made him famous, while his prose fiction and plays sunk into obscurity. His own publishers claimed that Milne had "wonderful insight into a child's mind" but was "not inordinatley fond of or interested in children." Milne remained throughout his life a bit embarrassed by the source of his fame, and his son, Christopher Robin, never welcomed the notoriety that the his association with the books brought him throughout his life, making him one of the most famous children in the world and never letting him really claim his own adulthood, at least in other people's minds.
But I'd like to remember them, Milne and Christopher, precariously balancing on a fence in photo that was taken in 1934. Like the stories, there is just a frisson of danger to the game, but it's also giddy, great fun.
Just mind that you don't fall on the balloon for the party.
Thanks this week to Henri Pensis and Richard Drake for their production work on these shows, to Mary Showstark and Joshua Krause for their research, and to Noah Bate for his help with the web site. "Recess" is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media. For further information about these programs, visit our web site at w w w . recess . ufl. edu
Program #40
22 October 1999 -- Elaine Needelman: Princess Mononoke
This is "Recess" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Today, Elaine Needelman has a review for us of an enormously popular animated film from Japan that promises to draw American audiences into its magical spell.
Next week, on October 29th, the Japanese film, "Princes Mononoke" is finally being released in the United States after taking the Japanese box-office by storm for the past two years. The only film that has grossed more in Japan is Titanic. The director Hayao Miyazaki is know in America for his two wonderful children's films that are currently available on video: "My Friend Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service." They're touching every audience base for the American version of "Princess Mononoke" by dubbing it into English with a cast that includes Clare Danes, Gillian Anderson, Minnie Driver, Puff Daddy, and Billy Bob Thornton.
"Princess Mononoke" is a beautifully drawn, complex, animated film about the war between the animal spirits of the forest and the humans who have defied and destroyed them. It has everything you could want in an epic adventure -- a dangerous quest for a magical cure, heart-pounding action, compelling effects, and the romance between Prince Ashitaka and Princess Mononoke, whose is able to communicate with directly with the forces of nature -- in fact, her name means "The spirit of things."
Miyazaki roots "Princess Mononoke" firmly in the culture of 14th century Japan but he also gives the film a core of universal themes. It's an ecological fable concerned with the struggle for balance between human demands and nature. But Miyazaki doesn't take any easy ways out of the dilemma; even Lady Eboshi, whose ironworks are wrecking the environment, is not a stereotypical villain. She represents progress and the relentless development of an industrial society with the resulting destruction of the natural world. The Princess is a teenage girl dressed in wolf pelts who fights savagely to protect her animal family, but she is also intrigued by the young man Ashitaka. It's a story about the eternal battle between good and evil, the power of undying love, and the important tests and tasks of character.
Because it is an animated film, it's easy to assume that "Princess Mononoke" is automatically appropriate for all children. But this is really an animated film for older children and adults, as its PG-13 rating reflects, because of its violence and truly gorey battle sequences. Here too, though, Miyazaki, seeks to create a balance, alternating furious action scenes with images of fragile and delicate beauty, the ideas of social responsibility with the emotional heart of the romatic epic. It's truly a film that's been worth the wait.
Recess is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media.
Program #41
25 October 1999 -- Family Foklore Books (Family History
Month)
I have an assignment for you. I can't help it; it's the teacher in me. It's Family History Month, and I know it's a little late in the month, but you can carry this over into November, and December -- in fact, you have until next October to do it.
What I'd like you to do is to collect all the lore of your family, about how your ancestors got to this country and where they came from in the old country, about what they did and who they married and how they cured themselves and what they sang when they sang, the jokes they told and still tell, the kinds of pets they raise and cars they buy; the family's legendary triumphs and disasters, the quirky relatives and the resident ghosts, the heirlooms that were smuggled out of Poland in a loaf of bread, and the trunk that grandfather brought with him that had all his tools in it -- the one he built by hand, with those same tools, the tools he said that would help him make his way in this new country. Find out about where they went and who they were. Gather the photographs together, and the blue ribbons, the newspaper clippings, and the pressed flowers. And make a beautiful book out of it.
And do this with your children. Have them help. In fact, have your children record your grandparents and aged uncles and second cousins, on tape of one kind or another. Have them hear about how one of your relatives homesteaded in Montana or ran a dry goods store in New Mexico, about the uncle who worked on the railroad and the other who made pencils out of cedar trees hauled out of the Florida swamps, and the other who looked for Captain Kidd's treasure up and down the Gulf Coast. Have them hear about how to make grandma's 14 vegetable soup and what to do about warts and what it means to be born with a veil. When my wife used this assignment in her English as a Second Language courses, her students brought her books that told, in poignant details of the joys and sufferings of families all over the world and what it meant to these students to be representing their families here, and with what a sense of responsibility they took their responsibility to, as several of them put it, "bring fragrance to the family name."
When I first make this assignment in my American classes, it's usually greeted at first with groans -- do I really have to talk to the oldest members of my family? A month or two later, they come in filled with excitement, with discoveries, with recognitions. One young woman, an orphan, who knew little about her past, discovered who her parents were and that she was distantly related to one of our nation's presidents. Another discovered that she and all the women in her family had been "born with a veil" and had powers to see the future. But they always discover somethign interesting and tell me, I wish I knew this when I was young, and they say something about this work that they don't say about any other assignment: no matter what you do with the course, don't change this, or I would never have found out who I really am.
Program #42
26 October 1999 -- Elaine Needelman on the Premier of Walt Disney
Presents
This is "Recess" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Tomorrow marks the anniversary of one of television's most successful shows, the first prime-time t.v. show for both children and adults, the show that gave us t.v.'s first mini-series. Here's Elaine Needelman to tell us about it.
On October 27, 1954, "Disneyland" premiered on ABC. Hosted by Walt Disney himself, it was a new type of program series that cleverly used television as a sales tool for future enterprises. Walt Disney agreed to do television primarily to generate support for Disneyland, the new amusement park, he was building in Anaheim, California. In fact, the first show featured "The Disneyland Story," which described coming attractions in the park that would open in the next year. Later shows featured promotions for upcoming Disney movies, cartoons from the Disney vaults, Disney films, nature shorts, and original tv series .
The hit of the first season was the three-part saga about Davy Crockett starring Fess Parker as the legendary frontiersman. This series produced a number-one song on the hit parade and inspired a nation-wide craze for all things Crockett -- coloring books costumes, rifles, and especially Davy's coonskin cap (over 10 million were sold).
The wildly successful evening "Disneyland" series changed names five times and networks three times over the next 30 years. It went off the air in 1990 but was revived on Sunday nights on ABC after Disney purchased the network.
Walt Disney used all types of media to establish "an image in the public mind" of what the word Disney should mean -- primarily wholesome family entertainment. The Disney company premiered its own cable network in 1983 and became one of the biggest sellers of home video with several Disney titles often in the Top Ten of national video sales simultaneously. One of the spin-offs during the 1950s of Disney's evening show, "The Mickey Mouse Club," is in permanent reruns, it seems, on the Disney Channel and it has spawned updated versions of the old show that featured singers like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and future members of the group N'Sync, all of whom are now teen pop stars.
Walt Disney's television series was a first of its kind, and its success and longevity has never really been matched. The many facets of Disney's empire have not been without their detractors and critics, but one thing remains clear from that opening show -- Disney's vision that saw quite clearly even then how he would make his name synonymous with wholesome, quality, family entertainment.
Program #43
27 October 1999 -- Rita Smith Lost and Found Essay on Teddy Roosevelt
Program #44
28 October 1999 -- Shelley Frazer Mickle on Jonas Salk and the Polio
Epidemic of the 1950s
Program #45
29 October 1999 -- James Whitcomb Riley's "Little Orphant Annie" for
Halloween
Rita Smith will provide the introductory material for this segment.
Little Orphant Annie
by James Whitcomb Riley
Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups an' saucers up,
an' brush the crumbs away,
An' shoo the chickens off the porch,
an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread,
an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other childern,
when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire
an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales
'at Annie tells about,
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!
Wunst they wuz a little boy
wouldn't say his prayers,
- An' when he went to bed at night,
away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler,
an' his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An' when they turn't the kivvers down,
he wuzn't there at all!
An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue,
an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz
thist his pants an' roundabout:
- An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!
An' one time a little girl
'ud allus laugh an' grin,
An' make fun of ever' one,
an' allher blood-an' kin;
An' wunst, when they was "company,"
an' ole folks wuz there,
She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em,
and' said she didn't care!
An' thist as she kicked her heels,
an' turn't to run an' hide,
They wuz two great big Black things
a-standin' by her side,
an' they snatched her through the ceilin'
'fore she knowed what she's about!
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!
An' little Orphant Annie says,
when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters,
an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit,
an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin' bugs in dew
is all squenched away,
- You better mind yer parunts,
an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you,
an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones
'at clusters all about,
'er ' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!
