Thrilled to Be Part (Take Part) in @PequotLibrary's Alphabet, Bedtime Stories, and Cautionary Tales Exhibit with Undergraduate Students at @FairfieldU

The hard work of brilliant minds at Pequot Library have paid off in their Spring Exhibit, Alphabet, Bedtime Stories, and Cautionary Tales, in Southport, Connecticut. 

The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the emergence in England and America of new attitudes toward children and education at the same that that America was casting off royal authority. The result was a booming market of print materials that, for the first time, contained text and illustrations geared toward a young audience. The exhibition draws from Pequot Library's extraordinary Children's Historical Collection to explore how children's books published int he years following the American independence reflect the changing political, economic, and social climate of the young nation.

The exhibit runs from February 18th through May 6th, and I'm fortunate to be part of a panel on new debates for children's books later this spring with colleagues from Kendall College and Career Academy. 

Today, I bring my cohort of 20 young people thinking about careers in education in participating in a walk through the exhibit, a service learning project, and some poetry writing (with kids in mind)(and to be used with students at Kendall College and Career Academy, as well as English language learners at Central High School. I'm looking forward to the off-campus, community-engaged learning. 

Of note, the Humanities CT grant also brought forward Prudence Crandall & Sarah Harris: Race and Reform in Early Connecticut with Joan DiMartino, Curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum. As serendipity would have it, I've also been thinking about Prudence Crandall in my own genealogy, as I wrote about a few days ago.

I am super excited to work with Cecily Dyer and Charles McMahon with their wisdom, foresight, and interest in the earliest books of literacy known to Connecticut school children. Of more interest to me, is the family roots of this region that are also unfolding on a daily basis. I can't wait to have my students think about this work in relation to their own families, histories, and possible futures as classroom educators. 

I'm also looking forward to connecting the Norwalk teacher and administrator who we're also working with about the talk to be hosted later this spring. Something tells me I might need to donate a copy of Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color to further enhance the collaboration.

As a young man taught me in my research with relocated refugee male youth from Somalia, Liberia, and Sudan, "History should come first." Indeed, I believe this is truth no matter what angle I choose to look at it from. 

Here's to unraveling history (and literacy). 

Onward we March! Happy National Women's Month. Go, Prudence. Go, Cecily Dyer, go Latoya Lisle, and go Dr. Nicole Fletcher for making all of these conversations possible - strong, intellectual women who make these conversations much more rich.