Introduce your class to primary sources from Archives and Special Collections, UConn’s only public archive that offers students opportunities to explore and experience original letters, diaries, photographs, maps, drawings, artists books, graphic novels, student newspapers, travel narratives, oral histories, and rare sound recordings to illuminate a given topic of study. With over 40,000 linear feet of materials – located in the center of campus at the Dodd Research Center – the Archives welcomes all visitors to its Reading Room, a quiet space to contemplate potentially transformative resources. Continue reading
Category Archives: Resources for Teaching and Learning
Archives At Your Fingertips: Teaching with Archives and Special Collections
Reply
Introduce your class to primary sources from Archives and Special Collections, UConn’s only public archive that offers students opportunities to explore and experience original letters, diaries, photographs, maps, drawings, artists books, graphic novels, student newspapers, travel narratives, oral histories, and rare sound recordings to illuminate a given topic of study. With over 40,000 linear feet of materials – located in the center of campus at the Dodd Research Center – the Archives welcomes all visitors to its Reading Room, a quiet space to contemplate potentially transformative resources.
Students are encouraged to drop in for their class project, First Year Experience credit, or simply for their own personal enrichment.
Faculty, teaching assistants, and other instructors are invited to design and schedule an instruction session with staff archivists as early as possible in the academic semester. For examples of class sessions taught recently by staff archivists, see the list outlined below.
The collections offer ample source materials for interdisciplinary research and instruction in such fields as art history; nineteenth and twentieth century American history, social movements, music, literature and book arts; blues music and African American musical culture; Latin American history and culture; children’s literature and illustration; nursing history; human rights; and Connecticut history.
The repository’s collection of personal papers animate the experiences, activities and creative processes of writers, activists, artists, political figures, and UConn faculty and students through time, and are critical for studying the communities and networks in which these individuals worked and thrived.
Popular with students, the Alternative Press Collection, graphic novels, artists books, Comix, Fanzines, science fiction, Socialist/Communist Pamphlets, and other special collections offer a variety of materials for exploring diverse discourses in and across contemporary events and social issues. Publications and ephemera from non-mainstream political movements (Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, and other Radical Politics), Black Power and non-white activism and social justice organizations, Women’s Liberation/Feminist movements, presses and organizations, and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer organizations and movements can be found in the Alternative Press Collection.
Classes that visited Archives and Special Collections for an instruction session last year include the following:
Advanced Photography
African American Experience in the Arts
American Landscapes, Walden and Thoreau
Art of China
British Literature: The Tudors
Children’s Literature
Communication Design
Connecticut Soldiers and the Civil War
The Historian’s Craft
History of Women and Gender in the United States
Introduction to Creative Writing
Irish History
Little Magazines and the Mimeo Revolution
Mexico and Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives
The Literature(s) of Medieval Iberia
Spanish Literature and Film
Trauma and History
United States and Human Rights
Word and Image: Early Illustrated Books
If you are a faculty member, visit Archives and Special Collections during public hours, Monday through Friday, 9:00am to 4:00pm. Or contact the archives staff today to discuss a prospective viewing of materials, instruction session or class visit. We look forward to hearing from you!
Emily Arnold McCully gets a new finding aid
A new finding aid is now available for the Emily Arnold McCully Papers. The collection consists of sketches, dummies, research materials and artwork for eight of her books: The Taxing Case of the Cows, the Divide, Old Home Day, Ballot Box Battle, Ballerina Swan, My Heart Glow, Secret Seder, and The Helpful Puppy. Emily Arnold McCully, an American writer and illustrator, won the Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration in 1993, for Mirette on the High Wire which she also wrote.
Secret Cave: Discovering Lascaux (New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010)
She was born in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1939, and grew up in Garden City, New York. She attended Pembroke College, now a part of Brown University, and earned an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University. At Brown she acted in the inaugural evening of Production Workshop and other plays, co-wrote the annual musical, Brownbrokers, and earned a Phi Beta Kappa key.
In 1976, she published a short story in The Massachusetts Review. It was selected for the O’Henry Collection: Best Short Stories of the Year. Two novels followed: A Craving in 1982, and Life Drawing in 1986. In 2012, Ms. McCully published Ballerina Swan with Holiday House Books for Young People, written by legendary prima ballerina Allegra Kent. It has received rave reviews from The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, and School Library Journal and was praised in the “Talk of the Town” column in The New Yorker.
Ballot Box Battle (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)
As an actor, she performed in Equity productions of Elizabeth Diggs’ Saint Florence at Capital Rep in Albany and The Vineyard Theater in New York City. In addition to the Caldecott Award, Ms. McCully has received a Christopher Award for Picnic, the Jane Addams Award, the Giverney Award and an honorary doctorate from Brown University.
Emily Arnold McCully gets a new finding aid
A new finding aid is now available for the Emily Arnold McCully Papers. The collection consists of sketches, dummies, research materials and artwork for eight of her books: The Taxing Case of the Cows, the Divide, Old Home Day, Ballot Box Battle, Ballerina Swan, My Heart Glow, Secret Seder, and The Helpful Puppy. Emily Arnold McCully, an American writer and illustrator, won the Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration in 1993, for Mirette on the High Wire which she also wrote.
Ballot Box Battle (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1996). All rights reserved.
She was born in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1939, and grew up in Garden City, New York. She attended Pembroke College, now a part of Brown University, and earned an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University. At Brown she acted in the inaugural evening of Production Workshop and other plays, co-wrote the annual musical, Brownbrokers, and earned a Phi Beta Kappa key.
In 1976, she published a short story in The Massachusetts Review. It was selected for the O’Henry Collection: Best Short Stories of the Year. Two novels followed: A Craving in 1982, and Life Drawing in 1986. In 2012, Ms. McCully published Ballerina Swan with Holiday House Books for Young People, written by legendary prima ballerina Allegra Kent. It has received rave reviews from The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, and School Library Journal and was praised in the “Talk of the Town” column in The New Yorker.
Secret Cave: Discovering Lascaux (New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010). All rights reserved.
As an actor, she performed in Equity productions of Elizabeth Diggs’ Saint Florence at Capital Rep in Albany and The Vineyard Theater in New York City. In addition to the Caldecott Award, Ms. McCully has received a Christopher Award for Picnic, the Jane Addams Award, the Giverney Award and an honorary doctorate from Brown University.
Dr. Kate Capshaw launches new book
Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks (University of Minnesota Press).
From Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Ph.D., Director, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute Associate Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies:
On February 12, 2015 (at 4 PM) the UConn Co-op (in Storrs Center) will be hosting a book launch for Kate Capshaw’s recently published book, Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks (University of Minnesota Press). What follows is a brief description of the book and a link:
Civil Rights Childhood explores the function of children’s photographic books and the image of the black child in social justice campaigns for school integration and the civil rights movement. Drawing on works ranging from documentary photography and popular historical narratives to coffee-table and art books, Katharine Capshaw shows how the photobook-and the aspirations of childhood itself-encourage cultural transformation. (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/civil-rights-childhood)
Dr. Katharine Capshaw
This event is sponsored and hosted by the University Co-Op. For more information, please feel free to contact Cathy Schlund-Vials (cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu<mailto:cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu>).
2014 Youth Media Awards Announced
Congratulations to all of the American Library Association award winners! The 2015 Youth Media Awards were announced on Monday, Feb. 2 during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Chicago. Several of our friends won major awards. A donor to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Weston Woods Studio, Inc., received the Andrew Carnegie Medal honoring the most outstanding video productions for children released in the previous year. The winners are Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly Ellard, producers of Me…Jane, the adaption of Patrick McDonnell’s Caldecott Honor book for 2012 about Jane Goodall.
University of Connecticut’s Professor Emerita Marilyn Nelson received the Coretta Scott King (Author) Honor Book Award for How I Discovered Poetry, illustrated by Hadley Hooper and published by Dial Books. Donald Crews, who participated in the CT Children’s Book Fair in 1997, is the winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which honors an author or illustrator who had made “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” (ALA.org).
Natalie Lloyd’s first novel, A Snicker of Magic, was a hit at the 2014 CT Children’s Book Fair as was Natalie herself. The audiobook produced by Scholastic Audiobooks was awarded the Odyssey Award, for being one of the best audiobooks produced in English in the U.S. Another Book Fair participant from 2003, Ann M. Martin, was awarded the Schneider Family Book Award for Rain Reign. The Schneider Family honors books embodying “an artistic expression of the disability experience.” (ALA.org).
Mo Willems, another member of the NCLC and Book Fair family, won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award for his Waiting is not Easy! published by Hyperion Books for Children. Len Vlahos presented at the Book Fair in 2014 and was a finalist for the 2015 William C. Morris Award, given to a first-time author writing for teens. NCLC donor and Book Fair participant Emily Arnold McCully was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults for her work Ida M. Tarbell: the Woman who Challenged Big Business-and Won!
For a complete listing of the 2015 Youth Media Awards, visit the American Library Association’s site. Congratulations, everyone!
2015 Youth Media Awards Announced
Congratulations to all of the American Library Association award winners! The 2015 Youth Media Awards were announced on Monday, Feb. 2 during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Chicago. Several of our friends won major awards. A donor to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Weston Woods Studio, Inc., received the Andrew Carnegie Medal honoring the most outstanding video productions for children released in the previous year. The winners are Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly Ellard, producers of Me…Jane, the adaption of Patrick McDonnell’s Caldecott Honor book for 2012 about Jane Goodall.
University of Connecticut’s Professor Emerita Marilyn Nelson received the Coretta Scott King (Author) Honor Book Award for How I Discovered Poetry, illustrated by Hadley Hooper and published by Dial Books. Donald Crews, who participated in the CT Children’s Book Fair in 1997, is the winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which honors an author or illustrator who had made “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” (ALA.org).
Natalie Lloyd’s first novel, A Snicker of Magic, was a hit at the 2014 CT Children’s Book Fair as was Natalie herself. The audiobook produced by Scholastic Audiobooks was awarded the Odyssey Award, for being one of the best audiobooks produced in English in the U.S. Another Book Fair participant from 2003, Ann M. Martin, was awarded the Schneider Family Book Award for Rain Reign. The Schneider Family honors books embodying “an artistic expression of the disability experience.” (ALA.org).
Mo Willems, another member of the NCLC and Book Fair family, won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award for his Waiting is not Easy! published by Hyperion Books for Children. Len Vlahos presented at the Book Fair in 2014 and was a finalist for the 2015 William C. Morris Award, given to a first-time author writing for teens. NCLC donor and Book Fair participant Emily Arnold McCully was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults for her work Ida M. Tarbell: the Woman who Challenged Big Business-and Won!
For a complete listing of the 2015 Youth Media Awards, visit the American Library Association’s site. Congratulations, everyone!
Acknowledgment from a Strochlitz awardee
Dr. Craig J. Peariso, a Strochlitz awardee from a few years ago, has had his book Radical theatrics: Put-ons, politics and the Sixties published by the University of Washington Press. Focusing on left-wing political activism of the 1960s, Dr. Peariso argues that “these over-the-top antics were far more than just the spontaneous actions of a self-indulgent radical impulse” (jacket flap). Having done exhaustive research in the Archives’ Hoffman Family Papers, Dr. Peariso writes in his acknowledgement: “Archivists at numerous libraries have also played a key role in the completion of this work. Specifically, I would like to thank Terri Goldich and the staff at the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. Their award of a [Rose and] Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant and their assistance in navigating the Hoffman Family Papers were vital at the earliest stages of my research.” Thank you, Dr. Peariso, for confirming for us how valuable the Strochlitz grants are in support of academic research and scholarship.
Janet Lawler’s final post: It’s all about story.
IT’S ALL ABOUT STORY
When I began my research on the relationship between text and art in picture books, I was hoping to uncover the “secrets” of some of the author/illustrators whose work is housed in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection archives. I studied a number of different collections, and I am leaving with many ideas of how to improve my craft. My writing process will now include consistent creation of picture book mock-ups (dummies), and I have a greater understanding of specific approaches to writing text that “leaves room” for an illustrator.
Interestingly, though, I conclude my research with one overriding thought. The very best picture books—whether written by an author and illustrated by someone else, or created by an author/illustrator—have at their heart a good story. So authors and author/illustrators have equal opportunity to begin their creative picture book journeys in the same place – at the deep well of great stories we each have within us, stories about memorable characters who change as they solve problems or encounter conflict.
Revising text plays an important role in refining such stories (although the author/illustrator also revises art to strengthen his or her work). But always, it is the story that is the starting point. I will share a fine example:
WINGS: A TALE OF TWO CHICKENSby James Marshall
The kernel of this story appears to have been James Marshall’s vision of an old, hungry fox trying to outwit foolish fowl to find a meal. A preliminary sketch shows the disguised fox tricking a chicken into a bag.
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens. Sketch of fox bagging chicken. Series I, Box 12: Folder 217 of James Marshall Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.
When two silly geese sisters offer to help transport the heavy bag, the fox says, “This is too good to be true.”
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens. Sketch of fox and geese, in Series I, Box 12: Folder 217 of James Marshall Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.
An incomplete, early dummy of this story line shows a “chicken crossing” sign and a fox hiding behind a tree:
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens. Untitled, incomplete dummy, p.3. Series I, Box 12: Folder 216 of James Marshall Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.
The text on this opening page reads:
At a spot where chickens were
frequently known to cross the road,
a hungry fox came to stand and wait.
As he was no longer young
and agile, he had learned
to rely more heavily on his wits.
And for this occasion, he had come
in disguise.
The focus on the fox as protagonist continues in this version of the story, where we see the fox waiting in his chicken disguise:
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens. Untitled, incomplete dummy, pp. 4–5. Series I, Box 12: Folder 216 of James Marshall Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.
However, it appears that James Marshall soon decided he could tell a better story from another angle (the incomplete dummy ends on page 6).
The first complete dummy reveals that the plot has taken a very different turn. Marshall completely switches the beginning to focus on two chickens who are close friends (maybe the two silly goose sisters in his preliminary sketches inspired this turn); the fox still plays a key role, but he is no longer a protagonist.
The title of the book, shown on this hand-drawn dummy cover, is:
WINGS
A TALE OF TWO CHICKENS
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens. Sept. ’85 dummy, cover. Series I, Box 12: Folder 215 of James Marshall Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.
Two chickens, with parasols, stand side by side at the edge of a precipice, and a fox hides in bushes in the background. The reader immediately knows this is a story of friendship and danger, and the first line of the dummy introduces Edna and Winnie (Harriet and Winnie in the published version) who are “as different as two chickens could possibly be.”
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens. Sept. ’85 dummy, p.3. Series I, Box 12: Folder 215 of James Marshall Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.
The first page in the published book shows the two good friends sharing tea:
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens (New York: Viking Kestrel, 3. Photo taken from CLC C38, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.
Edna (Harriet) loves reading and hobbies. Winnie would “rather swat flies than read” and is easily bored. Marshall sets up this pair of friends immediately, and when the disguised fox appears and offers foolish Winnie a ride in a hot air balloon, Edna (Harriet) fears for Winnie’s safety. A whole series of events follows, with the dastardly fox ultimately outwitted by Harriet, disguised as a fox. The plot twists and understated text are hilarious, and readers cheer for the friends right up until the closing page, when Harriet tucks Winnie into bed.
Marshall revised and refined his text zealously—on the top of the cover of his Sept. ‘85 draft (see above) there is a parenthetical note he wrote to himself in blue pen, “too wordy.” The following pages are replete with red pencil cross outs and revisions, to pare the text of this story. For example:
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens. Sept. ’85 dummy, pp.4–5. Series I, Box 12: Folder 215 of James Marshall Papers. All rights reserved. No reproduction of any kind allowed.
Marshall clearly thought about pacing and forward movement as he revised. The above page 5 has a crossed-out, bracketed note he wrote to himself: [Some lead in here for story?]. He created that lead-in by penciling in the line spoken by Winnie just before the hot air balloon floats into the garden:
“I wish something wild would happen,” said Winnie.
And the story takes off from there. James Marshall continued to revise his text to strengthen his story and characters throughout that first complete dummy, a second dummy, a final dummy, and various pages of text revised within some of his sketchbooks.
As for character growth? Winnie is at last reading a book— about foxes. She exclaims, “Mr. Johnson was a fox!” Meanwhile, Harriet hasn’t given up on her friend. “Maybe there’s hope for her yet,” said Harriet.
Marshall, James. WINGS: A Tale of Two Chickens (New York: Viking Kestrel, 32. Photo taken from CLC C38, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.
INSPIRATION
I am concluding my research at the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection greatly inspired. For several months, I have been working on a picture book, Chipmunk and Robin, about two close friends who are very different. As I polish and revise this story, I will draw on my new knowledge of how some of the best picture book story tellers (who happen to also be illustrators) craft character, crisis, and resolution into a full and satisfying story arc. Even though it will be a lot of work, the real secret is—it will be a lot of fun!
Great News from Barbara McClintock
Congratulations, Barbara McClintock! Where’s Mommy, written by Beverly Donofrio, has been named one of New York Times Best Illustrated Books for 2014. The NYT website reports: “Every year since 1952, the Book Review has convened an independent panel of judges to select picture books on the basis of artistic merit. The winning books are chosen from among thousands for what is the only annual award of its kind.” Fantastic news, Barbara!
Louise Menzies: Time to Think Like a Mountain
Louise Menzies, a New Zealand artist, has returned to Archives & Special Collections to explore the extensive holdings in the Alternative Press Collection, with the help of curators Graham Stinnett, Melissa Watterworth Batt, and Kristin Eshelman. 
Ms. Menzies’ new exhibition is a “series of new photographic and paper-based works that merge form and content, raising subtle questions about the values inhabiting certain processes and styles, as seen [in] the predominantly activist and underground press material that comprise the collection.” (Professor Barry Rosenberg). Ms. Menzies will also present a 16mm film from 2013, entitled The Press, Kodak Eastman 5222.
Ms. Menzies gave a gallery talk on Time to Think Like a Mountain on Wednesday, Oct. 8 to an appreciative audience in the Contemporary Art Galleries, Art Building. The exhibition will run through November 21, 2014, For more information contact Professor Rosenberg at 860.486.1511.
Penn Libraries’ Children’s Book Symposium
The Penn Libraries’ Children’s Book Symposium Creating Children’s Books: Collaboration and Change will take place in conjunction with two fall exhibitions in the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. The exhibitions are “As the Ink Flows: Works from the Pen of William Steig” which will explore the life and career of the artist, cartoonist, and children’s book author/illustrator William Steig, and “The School of Atha: Collaboration in the Making of Children’s Books” which celebrates the life and work of Atha Tehon, children’s book designer and longstanding Art Director for Dial Books for Young Readers. The symposium will be held on October 17-18, 2014. For more information and the registration form, go to www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/childrensbooks_symposium.html.
