|
|
||
|
||
| Lewis Carrol, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland |
Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books (Septemer 27, 2008 - January 17, 2009) explores the Newberry's little-known collection of books and manuscripts created for and by children. The exhibition showcases aspects of the interaction between children and books and includes approximately 65 works, drawn from the Library's collection of thousands of children's books in more than 100 languages, from the fifteenth century to the present.
Artifacts of Childhood features such treasures as: the first illustrated edition of Aesop's Fables (1485); the first edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865); a nineteenth-century collectible story, La Fille de L'Exile, that is similar in format to Pokemon cards; and ABC books from 1544 to 1992.
These and other materials allow exhibition visitors to traverse time, space, and cultures to trace continuity and change within the history of children's books, to examine changing attitudes towards children and childhood, and to understand the importance of the study of the history of childhood through children's books.
Admission to the exhibition is free and no reservations are required.
Artifacts of Childhood co-curators Jenny Schwartzberg and Paul F. Gehl will lead a 45-minute gallery walk of the exhibition each Thursday evening at 5:45 pm (October 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30, November 6, 13, and 20, December 4, 11, and 18, and January 8 and 15).
Admission to the gallery walks and the exhibition is free. No reservations are required.
Saturday, September 27, 10:30 am
Speaker: Debra Mitts-Smith, Dominican University, with comments and discussion by Roberta Seelinger Trites, Illinois State University
Professor Mitts-Smith will examine visual, textual, and folkloric sources to understand the wolf as an icon of widely varied meaning and nearly universal significance. She traces the image over time in children's books from the "Big Bad Wolf" of fairy tales to an endangered species in need of protection. Following her talk, Mitts-Smith will discuss her work in the context of fairy tales with Professor Trites, an expert in children's and adolescent literature.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Tuesdays, 5:45 pm - 7:45 pm
October 7 - November 11
6 sessions, $140
*Online registration for the course is closed and only a few spaces remain in the class. Call (312) 255-3700 to register.
This workshop focuses on how to create and write a successful children's picture book that touches, delights, and informs today's young readers. Participants' manuscripts will be shared and discussed to highlight the variety of available picture books, craft, the writing process and today's children's book publishing world. Writers of all levels will be offered a supportive, challenging, and encouraging environment.
 |
||
| Seth Lerer, Children's Literature |
Thursday, October 16, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Seth Lerer, Stanford University
Seth Lerer explores the iconic books, ancient and contemporary alike, that have forged a lifelong love of literature in young readers during their formative years. Children's Literature charts the makings of the Western literary imagination from Aesop's fables to Mother Goose, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Peter Pan, from Where the Wild Things Are to Harry Potter. Along the way, Lerer also looks at the changing environments of family life and human growth, schooling and scholarship, and publishing and politics in which children found themselves changed by the books they read.
Seth Lerer is the Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities and Professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
For more information about our other Meet the Author events, click here.
 |
||
| Henry Dresser, Specimens of Writing |
Saturday, October 18, 11:00 am
Speaker: Paul F. Gehl, The Newberry Library
The Co-curator of 700 Years of Children's Books at the Newberry Library will relate the pre-history of children's literature in the schoolbooks of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. He will show how certain traditional textbook forms were increasingly elaborated independently of the classroom, thus becoming prototypes for the children's literature of today. Gehl also believes that some ancient textbook strategies deserve to be re-examined for today's digital classroom, and he will offer examples drawn from six centuries of textbooks for the teaching of second languages.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, November 1, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Speakers: Leonard Marcus and Audrey Niffenegger
Leonard Marcus, a leading historian and critic of children's literature, will discuss Minders of Make-Believe, his sweeping new history of the visionaries who created and shaped the children's book industry in the U.S. Celebrated author and illustrator Audrey Niffenegger will offer a more personal view as she considers the magical world of the Little Golden books and their value to her own, adult-oriented work.
This program is cosponsored by the Chicago Humanities Festival. Tickets are $5 in advance (free for educators and students) at www.chfestival.org or call (312) 494-9509.
Saturday, November 1, 12:30 pm - 3:00 p.m.
Workshop leaders: Esther Hershenhorn and Lisa Cinelli
For ages 7 to 11
SOLD OUT, contact the Chicago Humanities Festival to be placed on the waitlist at (312) 494-9509.
Children's author Esther Hershenhorn will join artist and illustrator Lisa Cinelli to help young writers and artists create their very own books in this unique workshop. Experimenting with some of the storylines and book styles displayed in the Newberry's concurrent exhibition Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books at the Newberry Library, children will leave the workshop with a good start on a great new story and their own handmade accordion book.
This program is cosponsored by the Chicago Humanities Festival. Tickets are free but required. See www.chfestival.org; or call (312) 494-9509.
Saturday, November 15, 10:00 am - 11:30 am 
A story reading and collage book-making workshop for ages 5 to 8
Author and Workshop Leader: Claire Hartfield
Join author Claire Hartfield as she reads Me and Uncle Romie and discusses it with her audience. Then kids will work with the author to create collage books, a technique Romare Bearden used in his art and which Me and Uncle Romie's illustrator, Jerome Lagarrique, chose as homage to Bearden. Children will leave with their own collage books.
Program is free, but reservations are required; call (312) 255-3700.
Saturday, December 13, 9:30 am - 2:30 pm
Four scholars will discuss the development of ethnic or multicultural children’s literature, which seeks to diversify the all-white world of children’s literature. Following thirty-minute presentations drawn from their respective specialties of Jewish, Latino, American Indian, and African American children’s books, they will form a panel to discuss with each other and with audience members such issues as authenticity, audience, self-esteem, and presentations of social conflict and cultural differences that make this field so important and so contested.
The following schedule is a guide only; speaker times may vary slightly; there will be short Q & A periods during the morning, but most disucussion with the audience and panelists will take place during the afternoon panel discussion.
9:30 am Welcome
9:40 am June Cummins-Lewis, San Diego State University, "All-of-A-Kind Americans? Becoming a Jew in Sydney Taylor's America"
10:10 am Debbie Reese, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Indians as Artifacts: How Images of Indians Are Used to Nationalize America's Youth"
10:40 - 11:00 am Break
11:00 - 11:30 am Michelle Martin, Clemson University, "Little Black Sambo and the Complicated History of African American Children's Books"
11:30 - 12:00 pm Phillip Serrato, San Diego State University, "Trying to Forget Pedro and Juanita: The Emergence of Chicano/a Children's Literature"
12:00 - 1:30 pm Lunch break
1:30 - 2:30 pm Panel discussion with the speakers and the audience
Admission is free. No reservations are required.
Saturday, January 10, 11:00 am
Recommended for ages 12 and up
Experience the passion, poetry, and pathos of Hamlet in about an hour. The Shakespeare Project of Chicago presents their powerful two-person adaptation in conjunction with a post-show discussion with the actors. Watch the Bard's story unfold then view an example of Shakespeare's plays published especially for children in the Newberry's current exhibition, Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books.
Admission is free. No reservations are required.
|
|
||
 |
||
| From Richard Henry Stoddard, Children in the Wood |
Saturday, January 17, 11:00 am
Speaker: Patricia Crain, New York University
Something happened to children's literature in the nineteenth century; it became recognizably modern. To explore this transformation, Patricia Crain charts the long life of a famous but now seldom-read children's classic, The Children in the Wood, about the kidnapping and death of two toddlers. This tale's strange evolution, from a sixteenth-century broadside through lush illustrated editions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offers a window into the origins of modern ideas of childhood and children's literature.
Patricia Crain is Associate Professor of English at New York University.
Admission is free. No reservations are required.
The Newberry Library
Center for Public Programs
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
telephone: (312) 255-3700
fax: (312) 255-3680
e-mail: programs@newberry.org