#englit1635

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Visiting the Neighborhood of Make-Believe

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

If you grew up anywhere between the 1970s and 1990s, odds are you probably have seen Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Filmed in and featuring Pittsburgh often, the show and its host Fred Rogers have a special place in the collective hearts of Pittsburghers. Saved in the University of Pittsburgh’s Special Collections, the interactive book­­­ The Neighborhood of Make-Believe Playtime Puppet Theater (1974) features the kind of imagination that the show encouraged in its child viewers. 

The book features paper puppets of many of the recognizable characters from the TV series, ­­­like King Friday XIII and Henrietta Pussycat, which children are able to punch out and play with. The book also gives much larger paper replicas of the familiar sets from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe so the characters are able to play in their familiar habitat. The inside of the book gives instructions on how cut and press out the characters, and how to prop open the sets for kids to play in their “own ‘Neighborhood of Make-Believe.’” With it’s bright blue castle of King Friday’s, or Daniel Tiger’s clock, the Playtime Puppet Theater book brings the magic of Mister Rogers’ show into the homes of the children who would have bought this, and encouraged them to play and act out imaginative scenarios with these familiar characters. Mister Rogers was able to bring the Neighborhood of Pittsburgh into the homes of children across the nation, and then through this interact book, was able to bring the sort of imagination and play that occurs in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

-Emily Frey, Senior, University of Pittsburgh

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The Little Piano Girl

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

The Little Piano Girl: the Story of Mary Lou Williams, Jazz Legend by Ann Ingalls and Maryann Macdonald, recounts the childhood of a gender defying musical prodigy.  Duke Ellington said of Mary, “Mary’s music retains a standard of quality that is timeless. She is like soul on soul.”

The story opens with the family moving from Atlanta to Pittsburgh, in hopes of bettering their lives through the war time steel boom.  Young Mary had demonstrated an early genius for the organ, at the age of three she could repeat songs she had heard only once.  In Pittsburgh, however, she had no access to an organ or a piano (until a happy accident sometime later).  She was also socially isolated, certainly for racial reasons—Mary was African American—but Ingalls and Macdonald indicate that there was distrust and or dislike of newcomers.  Children also teased her for her poverty.

Once Mary had access to a piano, first through a kindly neighbor and eventually of her own.  She made money playing, repeating any song she had heard, and eventually translating the sounds of her world and the rhythms of her neighborhood into her own tunes.

Her playing was expressive and emotive, and her passion never diminished. She toured the world for over 60 years, collaborating with other jazz legends and expanding the traditional role of women in jazz music, from only players to vocalists and composers as well.

-Alexa Tignall, Sophomore, University of Pittsburgh

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History Brought Alive at Special Collections

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

While much of documented history is taken from a white, Eurocentric perspective, Special Collections offers a peek into works and stories told and collected to celebrate diversity. One such work was The Little Piano Girl by Ann Ingalls and Maryann Macdonald. This beautifully illustrated children’s book tells the story of Mary Lou Williams, a talented jazz artist and leader in the Harlem Renaissance. While the book could have simply highlighted her successes, the authors actually delved into some of the racial conflict and social class issues that faced African American children in Pittsburgh at the turn of the century.

Not only does the story contain illustrations of an industrial Pittsburgh complete with smoke stacks, but also of a white child bullying Mary Lou on her first day of school. Mary Lou Walker’s family was not welcome when they came to the city, and there were both socioeconomic and racial barriers that impacted Mary Lou’s childhood. In the 1920s, Pittsburgh was not a city made for children. The streets were dirty, the factories were dangerous, and racial discrimination was an incredibly salient issue that still persists in the city today. The imagery in this book illustrates a Pittsburgh that was not altogether welcoming for a child of any race, but particularly unwelcoming for African American children.

However, the story also does an excellent job of sharing Mary Lou Walker’s talent and success in spite of her surroundings. She excelled at playing the piano, and her talent became widely appreciated by people of all races and socioeconomic statuses. The last image in the book shows Mary Lou Walker playing the piano as a grown woman in a pair of brand new shoes as a symbol of her accomplishments. This particular book was published in 2010, but it offers today’s children a chance to experience the history of Pittsburgh and of an African American child’s struggle to overcome immense adversity and become an influential and inspirational musician.

-Morgan Buck, Junior, University of Pittsburgh

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A Look into Pittsburgh’s Storytelling Past

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection. Students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials which we will feature throughout the week.

Most people associate children’s literature with brightly illustrated picture books, and rightfully so, as illustrations make it far easier for children to engage with the text.  However, there is another way that children consume literature outside of reading, storytelling.  The city of Pittsburgh has a rich history of child storytelling, being one of several places that lay claim to being the birthplace of modern child storytelling. It is with an eye to this special history that a rather non-descript, plain black and white booklet, a mere 20 odd pages, stands out amongst its more ornate brethren.  This booklet, Stories from the Norse: Historical Tales, Myths, and Sagas: Outlines for Story-Telling to Children over Nine years of Age was published by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Press itself in 1914, over 100 years ago.  It is a wonderfully preserved piece of Pittsburgh history, a testament to the aforementioned roots in children’s storytelling.  Adding to its importance, a stamp on its cover indicates that it was a part of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Training School for Children’s Librarians, the first such school of its type.

Stories from the Norse does not actually contain any whole stories.  Instead it is meant to serve as a guide, providing storytellers with a rather specific outline on how to deliver Norse stories to children over the course of 21 weekly story hours.  The introduction lays out the virtues of these stories, “The underlying ethical principle are strong and direct…No boy or girl old enough to appreciate them, can fail to be held by these vigorous and dramatic stories” (5). The stories are divided into 4 groups over the course of 21 days, with one story for each day, briefly outlined, and then sources are given both for the storyteller to learn the story, and suggested sources to give the children should their interest be piqued.  It is interesting that the stories are not given here, as well as the fact that multiple sources are given for all the stories, suggesting that this was designed to stimulate the creative efforts of the storyteller by forcing them to go find the story themselves.  Of course, this creativity is simultaneously stifled by the booklet, as there are quite a few asides in the story summaries dictating how the stories be told, “Discovery of Wineland the Good (not to be told in detail)” (8).  The struggle between creativity and regimen that this booklet suggests provides tremendous insight into the history/development of storytelling, and more broadly the manner in which adults allow children to interact with literature.

-Sean Talbot, Senior, University of Pittsburgh

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Precursor to the Neighborhood

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh where students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

There are few figures in my own childhood and that of countless others that have as strong an influence as Fred Rogers. He was incomparable. His legacy is undoubtedly going to survive years into the future, so it is only fitting to inspect some of the earliest work of his on The Children’s Corner with the less remembered but equally devoted Josie Carey. 

Together the two wrote Our Small World, a collection of writings from Carey and Rogers themselves, but also brief diary entries from characters in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Between Daniel Striped Tiger’s tale of his seventeen friends getting together to write a book together in the seventeen rooms of his clock, to King Friday XIIIs experiences in “The Kingly School,” this book delightfully adds perspective to beloved characters. The text also includes a play (titled “It’s a Small World”) with imaginative characters that are household objects rather than puppets. This was done so that children could play along without needing to go buy specific toys, but have fun acting out the story with “Lydia lamp” and “Gramma phone.” This is a lovely book from two truly legendary innovators of children’s entertainment.

-Jay Zimmerman, Sophomore, University of Pittsburgh

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Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood: The New Baby

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

This book, originally published in 1996 as a part of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’s “First Experiences” series, outlines thoughts, feelings, and potential events that may occur as a result of a new baby in a child’s household. It emphasizes the child’s point of view, addressing the new older sibling as an individual, “a person.” This is important for establishing a child’s independent agency, especially with the arrival of a new sibling. The New Baby features photos of African-American families as well as white families. In a popular media world dominated by Eurocentric representation and standards, a book about typical family life that includes and uplifts African-American children is vital.

The book also includes a foreword addressed to parents, explaining the purpose of the book and an overview of some feelings and behaviors that their older children may exhibit after the arrival of a sibling. By including this foreword, Fred Rogers creates a bridge between children and their parents, and establishes this book (and the rest of the books in the series) as a versatile resource for entire families experiencing the life-changing event of a new baby in the house.

-Margaret Baltes, Sophomore, University of Pittsburgh

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Charlotte’s Web

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

Everyone’s heard of Charlotte’s Web—that classic children’s tale about a little girl and her pig named Wilbur and a very clever spider. It has become so entrenched in our culture, adapted into movies and plays, that most of us take it for granted. Maybe that’s why my eye stopped on the Special Collections copy of Charlotte’s Web—it was something familiar, seen in a new way. Instead of a tattered elementary school classroom copy of E.B. White’s novel, I held in my hands a 1952 edition, and I could see the novel through the eyes of a little girl in the Carnegie Library, picking up this new story of love and friendship for the first time. 

Of course, no copy of Charlotte’s Web could be complete without the 47 drawings by Garth Williams, with “all the wonderful detail and warm-hearted appeal that children love.” With a book so rich with beautiful illustrations it’s easy to see why even the youngest of children were drawn to this book. At a time when literature for families and children was becoming a mainstay in Pittsburgh culture, this archived book gleans light on why Charlotte’s Web was such a popular read, and why it continues to be part of the culture today.

-Emily Weiss, Junior, University of Pittsburgh

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Life Long Life Lessons from Pittsburgh’s Potato Man

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

Often times in children’s books, stories and fables, the characters and the meaning of the book are meant to teach young readers a lesson. It may be a lesson about sharing, being kind to classmates or helping out one’s parents at home. Though many of these stories teach children a lesson, very few are able to transcend this and teach readers of any age the same lesson. One book that accomplishes this is The Potato Man, written by Megan McDonald and illustrated by Ted Lewin. 

The Potato Man starts in the present day, with a grandfather telling his grandchildren about a man, dubbed the Potato Man. Grampa’s story takes readers back to Pittsburgh’s East Street after World War I. In the story, Grampa is just a young boy, getting into trouble with his friend Otto. The Potato Man came down East Street with his horse and his cart, selling various vegetables. The Potato Man, whose real name is Mr. Angelo, lost his eye in World War I, and some of the children found his appearance to be frightening. Grampa, as a young boy associated any bad luck he encountered with the appearance of the Potato Man. 

After taunting the Potato Man and taking potatoes that had fallen off of his cart, Grampa’s dog finds a pomegranate that fell off of the Potato Man’s cart. Grampa, trying to make up for his bad behavior tries to return it. Instead of being angry or scolding him, the Potato Man gives it to him, as a Christmas gift. Though the Potato Man had been taunted and teased by these young kids, had his produce stolen and more, he was able to look past this and still be kind to the children. Through the Potato Man, we are all reminded to be kind to others and not judge anyone else by how they look. These lessons are incredibly important and sometimes even adults needed to be reminded of them 

-Marina Vanini, Senior, University of Pittsburgh

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Pittsburg, Pittsburgh.

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Special Collections department – which resides within Hillman Library on the Oakland campus – helps you step beyond just imagining the past; rather it allows you to know and to visualize what the past was actually like. Being able to visualize the past is something that isn’t just beneficial to children, but to everyone.

Some prime examples of historical literature found in Special Collections that allow you to visualize the history of Pittsburgh are the series of short children’s books published and sold by Kaufmann’s Department Store – which was headquartered in Pittsburgh and was founded in 1871.

-Wesley Hood, Junior, University of Pittsburgh

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Exploring Pittsburgh in 1954: From Generation to Generation

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

It is no secret that Pittsburghers love their city. Thus, it is only fitting that Pittsburgh from Fort to City aims to instill this sense of pride in children in this 1954 work. Prepared and published by The Pittsburgh Board of Public Education and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, the storyline trails a school excursion around the city of Pittsburgh, from inclines to rivers, while incorporating a light dose of history for educational purposes when a piece of history is found in a child’s own home. The spirit of Pittsburgh is transferred through the imaginary character mentioned by one of the schoolchildren, Steve, named Pa Pitt. According to Steve, Pa Pitt “…will live here as long as there is a Pittsburgh. He is the spirit of Pittsburgh.” In Part II, Steve delves into the story of early Pittsburgh while stumbling upon the Diary of Henry Stewart in the attic. He becomes entranced by all of the fights and forts as he reads about how Pittsburgh evolved from fort to city.

The tale of a classic Pittsburgh family is woven into this small book as well. Steve’s grandfather claims ownership to the diary, explaining that his uncle gave it to him when he was boy. The diary then comes to life through the grandfather’s storytelling. The grandfather tells tales of Pittsburgh’s many industries. Additionally, readers can take a peak into Steve’s classroom and learn some fun facts about the wonderful industrial city they call home. Who knew that Pittsburgh was home to the world’s largest manufacturers of rolling mill machinery? This classic item in Special Collections allows readers to catch a historical glimpse of 1954 Pittsburgh from a child’s perspective, while also soaking up some Pittsburgh pride that is passed down from generation to generation.

-Jolie Pepperman, Senior, University of Pittsburgh

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A Look Back on Pittsburgh’s Humble (and Religious) Beginnings

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

With it’s bustling streets and grand skyline it’s hard to think back to a time when Pittsburgh was made up of trees and log cabins, but in Right Here in Squirrel Hill (1953), that’s exactly the Pittsburgh that exists. The novel follows the story of John in his life as a settler of early Pittsburgh and how he started a longstanding church in the squirrel hill community. The novel was written by Hodge M. Eagleson, a prominent reverend in Pittsburgh who published two books and got his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.

Due to his background it’s easy to guess that Reverend Eagleson would bring a religious flair to his writing. His first novel published in New York, Laughing into Glory (1947), also shares in overtly religious tones. Right Here in Squirrel Hill brings up the issue of racism during this time period between white settlers and native Americans. Eagleson frames John as a moral voice through his compassion towards the Native Americans that would be shared with the more modern readers of the book. He then pairs this compassion with strongly held religious beliefs, not so subtly setting the novel up as a means of spreading his religion. Within the first few pages in fact, the reader learns of John’s nightly bible readings with his wife and witnesses a Christian burial. Overall, working with Right Here in Squirrel Hill in special collections is a time machine to Pittsburgh past, with very real connections to the city as a whole, but also the spiritual community within this steel city.

-Danielle Bereschak, Junior, University of Pittsburgh

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Fragile Treasure

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

The Pitt Archives Services Center is located in a nondescript building on the outskirts of Pittsburgh’s beleaguered Homewood neighborhood. Through the assistance of a helpful staff member, I found a charming and mysterious little children’s book. It is described in the catalog as an “Old English Primer” dating back to the 19th century, although the exact year of publication is not known. The book is in the familiar form of an alphabet nursery rhyme, with every letter standing for a type of person. Most of the letters stand for professions, like Inn-keeper and Watchman, while other letters stand for character-traits or defining activities, like Miser, Hunter and Gamester (pictured above). Each character is used in a line of the poem, and some of the lines are connected such as “U Was a Usurer, a miserable elf: V Was his victim, who ruined himself.” The accompanying caricatures, with their giant heads and forlorn expressions, must have delighted the children whose families could afford such books.

Unfortunately, the condition of this book is not good, and the pages are so delicate that they must be turned by an archive employee. The most damaged pages make up a two-page-spread at the center of the book. This illustration features all the letters of the alphabet, lined up in a dark landscape, with the corresponding head of the caricature placed on the letter itself. These anthropomorphized letters are all out of order, which might be an allusion to some of the antisocial behavior mentioned in the poem. Learning the alphabet must have been easier for kids in the 19th century, when an author could depict the letters as drunks and murderers. This book is part of the collection of John A. Nietz, a University of Pittsburgh professor who collected old textbooks and other educational material. His collection, along with later acquisitions, make the University of Pittsburgh one of the top three archives of early American textbooks in the world. 

-Andrew Blight, Junior, University of Pittsburgh

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Kentu Repertory Theatre presents “Boppin’ with the Ancestors”

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

In the fall of 1993 two young men, gang members running from the police, took refuge in a barber shop. It was there, a barber shop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, among the spirits of Martin Luther King and Malcom X (disguised as barbers of course) that the boys decided to turn their lives around and live a life that their ancestors had hoped for.

This of course is not a true story, but one written by playwright Rob Penny. Penny was a local Pittsburgher, raised in the Hill District. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh where he became a co-founder of the Africana Studies Department. People that knew him remember him as an intellectual with a particular interest in black heritage. In fact, in 1968 he and his friend opened a Black Nationalist theater called Black Horizon Theater. And in 1975 a woman named Dr. Vernell Lillie opened her own theater called the Kuntu Repertory Theatre, in which he intended to showcase Penny’s plays. It was here that the play “Boppin’ with the Ancestors” premiered. As popular as the theater and its plays became, the Kuntu was not just a venue in which to see a show. It also served as a place where African American writers could meet, discuss and work together. As you can see in the original program brochure for “Boppin’ with the Ancestors”, housed in the University of Pittsburgh’s Special Collections, the KRT was very interested in supporting the African American communities of Pittsburgh. “The Kuntu Repertory Theatre was created for the purpose of training and exposing students and other community residents to the African American theatre arts.”

Of course one of the ways the KRT did this was by showcasing plays written about African Americans, by African Americans. “Boppin’ with the Ancestors,” whose script can also be found in the University of Pittsburgh’s Special Collections, does not shy away from the violence not only between the black community and law enforcement, but within the black community itself. Also, throughout the brochure, the Kuntu displays advertisements for local African American businesses. For example there is an ad for “The African Store” in which one can purchase all things related to African culture, including clothing and candles. And on the back of the brochure a business advertises Kente scarves that they encourage the class of ’95 to purchase before graduation. It is clear that Vernell and Penny were passionate about supporting the black communities of Pittsburgh, and were successful in doing so.

-Melissa Brant, University of Pittsburgh

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Commercial Collaborations with Children

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh where students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr essay about the materials. 

One item that peaked my interest in Special Collections was a very special book written by the boys and girl of Pittsburg and edited by Rev. John Anderson Jayne. The Kaufmann’s Sketchbook of Great Inventors is a collection of essays written by school age children in Allegheny County about the lives and accomplishments of great inventors throughout history. The contest concept caught my eye because I remember the thrill of being a child and entering coloring or essay contests similar to this and know how fun and rewarding it was to work on something that could be seen or read by many other individuals. In having this contest and including children in work usually meant for adults, the Kaufmann Brothers fostered and stimulated cultural, historical and scientific interest for children in an exciting and fun manner. Also, the production of this book promoted community outreach for the Kaufmann Company. Commercially, this contest cultivated more business for the Kaufmann Brothers because later the book was for sale and parents could buy their children a copy for Christmas to encourage and stimulate literacy. 

The Kaufmann Brothers regularly had children’s books for sale around Christmas when the store received more business because of gift giving. Another example of the books the Kauffman Brothers made and sold at Christmas is Kaufmann’s Sunday School Greetings: Christmas 1908, which is a guide to the greatest wonders all around the world. Both books have beautiful illustrations on the front and back covers that are colorful, cheerful and look entertaining. The bright colors and fun pictures of different machines and children riding a sled are eye-catching to young people enticing them to want to pick up the books and read. Also, the concept of reading another child’s work is exciting and inspiring for children because people their age wrote an essay that is in a book sold in stores. The collaboration between the Kauffman Brother’s company and the children of Pittsburgh was a unique and exciting opportunity that is now permanently cataloged in history because it is stored in Special Collections.

-Maria Pane, Sophomore, University of Pittsburgh 

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Traveling the World at The University of Pittsburgh Special Collections

Special Collections recently welcomed Courtney Weikle-Mills’ ENGLIT 1635: Children in Pittsburgh. Students had an opportunity to learn about collections that focus on contemporary Pittsburgh cultural organizations and Pittsburgh-based authors.  Curators and Librarians highlighted the Fred E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection, the Nietz Old Textbook Collection, and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Children’s Literature Collection and students were asked to submit a Tumblr post about the materials.

Traveling and exploring different parts of the world would have been a difficult endeavor for families in 1908 Pittsburgh.  Back in that time there one great way for children and their family to travel to a far away land was through Kaufmann’s Sunday School Greeting.  A holiday book that offered a window into areas of the globe the average Pittsburgh family could only dream of going.  The book starts in Europe looking at monuments in London, Paris, and Italy before traveling to Egypt and then Asia before finishing up at California and Colorado.

As a child this would have been a book I would read over and over again, never putting it down.  I was always fascinated in the ancient world as a child and this book would have been the perfect novel to me.  Kaufmann’s Sunday School Greeting provided a picture and short description of monuments like the Parthenon in Athens, the Coliseum in Rome, and the Pyramids of Egypt, making a child feel as if he or she was actually at these places.

-Stephan Patterson, University of Pittsburgh