Lydia Maria Child included this selection on how to jump rope in The Girls Own Book, a book published in 1833. Why did girls in early 19th-century America need instructions on how to jump rope? Why did Child's feel the need to caution girls? Ever since boys had first begun to jump through hoops and with ropes on cobblestoned streets in 17th-century Europe, jumping rope had been considered a game not suitable for girls.

By the early 19th century, the emergence of a new gendered ideology that promoted passivity and domesticity appeared to reinforce earlier proscriptions that limited girls' play. Yet the recommendations of antebellum child-rearing advisors suggest that many believed that active play was good for girls. Along with Child, other experts predicted that open-air exercise would improve girls' dexterity, scientific inquiry, patience, diligence, as well as strengthen their characters and rid them of debilitating medical conditions.

In contrast to the innumerable depictions of idealized girls playing passively indoors, real girls engaged in unfettered and vigorous games in fields, rivers, quarries—even cemeteries. Girls' new freedom of movement had been made possible by recent changes in clothing fashions. Girls' shorter dresses ("frocks") enabled them to skate, sled, run, and romp. Yet it was the introduction of "pantalettes" or "pantaloons" (the loose pants worn under dresses seen in this illustration) that enabled girls to make the game of jumping rope their own.

Elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world the game has had different methods and meanings (e.g., Chinese jump rope). In the slave South African-American girls transformed jump rope rhymes originally from Germany and England into ones with more transgressive meanings about slavery's ills.

Whether known as Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Babbo Natale, Christkind, Père Noël, Santa Claus ("Santa") or by many other names, this legendary gift-giver in European folklore and hagiography is well known around the world.

Writing a letter to Santa is among the numerous traditions surrounding Christmas. Although in 1889, Thomas Nast—the caricaturist credited with the modern portrayal of Santa—presented Santa reading letters from the parents of children in "Santa Claus's mail," writing to Santa is as much of a children's ritual as sitting on his lap. The form of "Dear Santa letters" typically include: a testament of "nice" not "naughty" behavior, a wish-list of toys, courteous mention of Mrs. Claus and the elves, and concern for the reindeer (especially Rudolph). One study found that girls’ letters tended to be longer, more polite, and include more requests for clothing or functional items as well as more gifts for other people. Recent research studies on elementary-school children in the U.S. have found that gender-neutral toys are as popular as sex-typed toys among girls and boys.

Children in Poland, Japan, and Great Britain are allegedly the most prolific writers of letters to Santa. While sample letters are on Internet sites that also sell Santa stationery, far more common is the hand-written letter illustrated with Santas, reindeers, sleds, Christmas trees, presents, etc. Japanese children sometimes include pieces of origami with their letters. Addressed to Santa in Toyland, the North Pole, Lapland, the Arctic Circle, the town of Santa Claus, Indiana, and elsewhere in the world, children’s letters are often answered by postal workers and charity volunteers. While children in Canada use a special postal code (H0H 0H0) those in Mexico and other Latin American countries send their letters attached to helium balloons. Since the turn of the 20th century children have also sent their Santa letters to newspapers where they have been reprinted in articles.

Along with other children who live in Ontario, Mary sent her letter to Eaton’s Department store that sponsored an annual Christmas parade. In what ways is the letter 9-year-old Mary wrote to Santa in 1968 consistent with children’s practices and in what ways is it unique? What might account for the differences? In addition to gender differences do children’s letters to Santa differ according to race, class, and region? What larger purposes might this ritual serve for parents and society?

Pocahontas, a legendary figure in American history, was the daughter of a powerful 17th-century Powhatan chief. Allegedly seeking retribution for the murder of two tribesmen by the English, Powhatans captured John Smith, one of the founders of Jamestown, Virginia, an English settlement established in 1607. According to Smith's account, Pocahontas (whose real name was Matoaka) prevented the execution by her father. Continued cultural conflict led the English to capture and ransom Pocahontas six years later. During her captivity, she converted to Christianity and subsequently, changed her name to Rebecca, married John Rolfe (an English tobacco planter), bore a son, and traveled to London where she was presented as Lady Rebecca at the court of Queen Anne. While on board the ship bound for home in 1617 Pocahontas became ill and died.

As the daughter of a "chief" or "king," the English eulogized Pocahontas as a "princess" even though her status in Algonquian society is unclear. Although exoticized and erotocized to some degree, Pocahontas was further romanticized and sentimentalized. In representations such as Pierre Gustave Eugene Staal's printed in World-Noted Women (1858), Pocahontas was portrayed as more Caucasian and Christian than Native American. And by rejecting her "barbarous" girlhood and embracing piety, chastity, submission, and domesticity in Victorian children's stories, Pocahontas modeled feminine civility for daughters of the "new" middle class.

Students might compare this version with Smith's text and others shaped by prevailing ideals about gender, race, and girlhood including the most recent by Disney.

Strongly influencing the invention of Robert J. Clay's mechanized "Creeping Baby Doll" in 1871, were changing notions of childhood that fostered children's development.

Allowing babies to crawl on all fours as did Clay's doll reflected recent changes in childrearing practices. In Early Modern Europe and in early America, the association between crawling babies and the insane and animals, led parents to require babies to stand and walk as soon as they were able. Greater understanding of children's development by the early 19th century led parents to stash the seat-less "standing stool" that had been used for generations. Although in 1835, Amira Phelps, a mother and a female educator, asserted in her diary that she would not let her son "learn to creep," by the time he was able to she accepted crawling as "nature's way."

As notions of childhood continued to change in the years after the Civil War, American men like Robert J. Clay applied their ingenuity to the invention of toys and the development of an American industry. Competing against the Europeans whose dolls flooded the American market, male inventor/businessmen applied machine technology to doll designs. Rather than patent the entire doll as Clay did, most inventors patented a single device (e.g., joints).

Although Clay claimed in his patent that the Creeping Baby Doll would be a "very amusing toy," mechanical dolls disturbed more than delighted consumers. Enoch Rice Morrison's top heavy "Autoperipatetikos" dolls often fell flat on their faces and Edison's "Talking Dolls" had speech problems. Seeking to improve upon Clay's prototype, his employer, Robert Pemberton Clarke, patented an "Improved Creeping Baby Doll."

Patent drawings and descriptions of inventions provide more than just technical information: these sources are useful for understanding the construction of dolls and childhood.

Thanksgiving was not uniformly celebrated until major efforts to nationalize it were undertaken late in the nineteenth century. Despite Lincoln's proclamation that made Thanksgiving a national holiday during the Civil War, few Americans celebrated the holiday like middle-class Protestants in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states did. Southerners refused to recognize the "Yankee holiday," Catholics opposed it on religious grounds, and the poor couldn't afford a turkey. African-Americans went to church on Thanksgiving and men in rural Pennsylvania and New York City masqueraded at parades and parties until the late 1800s.

At the dawn of the 20th century, hordes of poor children dressed up in costumes, begged for money or treats, and pulled pranks (e.g., soaped windows or pilfered shop signs) on penny pinching urban denizens on Thanksgiving. Their so-called "ragamuffin parade" had its origins in the European traditions of carnival that was transported and transplanted by immigrants in the decades before Thanksgiving became a sedate family holiday.

Progressive-era reformers, school superintendents, and the police disapproved of the children's cultural practice. Also chagrined by the "pernicious custom" that undermined family bonds and national identity, was the group of upstanding church and charitable men who urged New Yorkers in 1911 not to nurture blackmailing and begging. The cultural authority of these urban leaders led pubic school teachers and settlement house workers to require students to write festive poems, perform plays, and draw pictures of turkeys, pumpkins, and Pilgrims.

The goal of the school presentations and projects on American history and culture was to instill a national identity and civil religion in children. In turn, patriotic children were expected to instruct their immigrant parents in dominant American customs and values.

Mary Green of Worcester, MA, created this embroidery in 1804 at the age of 16. She based it on the 1796 engraving, "Liberty in the Form of the Goddess of Youth Giving Support to the Bald Eagle," by artist-entrepreneur, Edward Savage (fig. 2).

In this enormously popular allegory that celebrated nationhood in the years after the American Revolution, Liberty is portrayed as a female adolescent. Draped in a long, flowing gown, this stylized Liberty nourishes the Republic (represented by the eagle). She also treads on symbols of British oppression (e.g., the key to the Bastille on a broken chain, a scepter, and the garter of a royal order). An American flag and the Liberty Phrygian Cap float above her head. In what ways does Green's interpretation of Liberty differ from Savage's? What might account for those differences?

The representation of a youthful Liberty was not only allegorical; it also was a prescriptive message that must have resonated with girls like Mary Green. Anxieties about the future of untried democracy led contemporaries to compare the independent states to impetuous youth. In order to ensure the future of the Republic, adolescent girls were trained to fulfill their forthcoming role as "Republican Mothers" who would inculcate their children with civic virtue. The female seminaries launched at the end of the 18th century provided an unprecedented academic curriculum as well as lessons in feminine accomplishments exemplifying refinement and utility. Girls perfected their repertoire of fancy needlework skills (e.g., French and bullion knot stitch) by embroidering popular pictorials (such as this one), commemoratives, and morning art with silk floss. Girls also practiced their knowledge of geography by embroidering map samplers on ivory silk.

"Italian Mother and Baby" appeared in Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890). This image captures the misery of urban poverty as well as the tenacity of life. It is infused with unmistakable sentimentalism and symbolism. This forlorn mother with her swaddled baby is evocative of Mary and of many paintings of "Madonna and Child." The hat hanging on the wall above her head is also suggestive of the halo that long represented the sacred in ancient art and religious iconography.

Many of Riis's photographs provide insight into the struggles of everyday life for immigrant children. What does this photo reveal about infancy among Italian immigrants? In what ways does the material culture of infancy mingle Old World practices and modern ones? While useful for recording the past, documentary photographs need to be seen through a critical lens. For example, historians have observed that children in Riis's photographs are portrayed as innocents, victims, or criminals. How is the baby in this picture represented?

How did Riis stimulate sympathetic feelings and summon sacred associations in this photo's gritty realism? In order to create this rendition of the Virgin Mary and Child Riis developed the "flash" technique that illuminated the basement of this New York City tenement. The halo-like hat was Riis's own and did not belong to the father who barely supported this family as a rag picker. Why might Riis have staged the scene? As a social reformer, Riis used religious imagery in order to capture the attention of the middle-class and inspire them to act on their beliefs to help the poor.

This parodic folksong is representative of the "culture"—texts, toys, uses of technology, social practices, and shared meanings—young people create when they selectively incorporate commercial products into their peer activities. Borrowing from cultural traditions (the song "Jingle Bells") and contemporary media/material objects they find in their everyday lives (Batman products), the inventive remixing children engage in frequently inverts the powerlessness they experience in relation to adult authority and institutions. In this song the belittlement of the Dynamic Duo's heroic status, the breakdown of their super car, and the celebration of the escape of their enemy, the Joker, playfully challenges the moral order of right and wrong that organizes social behavior. Another variant of the song more explicitly challenges adult authority by changing the last line to: "And the Commissioner broke his leg." Other folksongs challenge adult authority and institutions more directly still, as in the parody "On top of Old Smoky/All covered with sand/I shot my poor teacher/With a pink rubber band."

Adults often expect children's toys, games, and play activities to be educational; they frequently express concern if mass-marketed products seem to promote anti-social behaviors: acquisitiveness, competition, play fighting/violence, and sexuality being the most objectionable. A great deal of the oral lore children share with each other deliberately transgresses these norms in order to create a distinct (often covert) culture among their peers that they control, however temporarily. Similarly, the lore that children create allows them to explore social taboos.

The song "Batman smells" exhibits common themes found in children's folklore. Batman's odor is an example of grosslore that allows children to pursue the curiosity they have about their own bodies. A fartlore variant of the song celebrates another villain in the last line: "And Mr. Freeze cut the cheese." The pun of Robin laying an egg is a rich example of many common features of childlore: (1) it demonstrates children's inventive play with, and contravention of, the rules of language; (2) it fantastically and nonsensically (as a challenge to adult insistence on rationality and reality) transforms Robin into an animal; and (3) it may be interpreted as an example of the common theme of food. If the adult authority invested in the hero status of Batman and Robin is challenged in this song, so too does the song undercut their masculinity. Variants of the song feature a last line that has Batman, Robin, or the Joker doing ballet. Interpreting this variant requires attention to the singer-audience context in which the song is performed. Childlore frequently reinforces traditional definitions of gender. By inverting traditional definitions of strong masculinity this variant is an example of children's awareness of and interest in gender difference. In another context, sung by girls, this variant is an example of the ways girls' lore sometimes challenges gender hierarchies.

Given the inventive, appropriative nature of children's culture, it is probable that "Batman Smells" is part of a longer tradition of folk parodies. It is likely that it was preceded by parodies of "Jingle Bells" dating from the publication of that song in 1857. As children have always turned the products of mass culture back into their own folklore, it is certain that "Batman Smells" has been sung continuously by generations of children (and adults) since the first Batman comic appeared in 1939. The song is a perennial favorite and has been infinitely reinvented because Batman has been continuously marketed to young people and adults as comic books, cartoons, television shows, action figures, Halloween costumes, movies, and video games. Now, with the gross and oppositional characteristics of children's folklore more pervasively available through 24/7 cable television programming and children themselves disseminating their parodies through streaming videos on the internet, the covert world(s) of children's folklore have become a more apparent and central part of our information societies and commercial cultures.1

This short story by fiction writer, S.L. Wisenberg, sheds light on the influence of Anne Frank on the imagination and identity of Jewish girls growing up in postwar America. Written from a child's point of view and in the language of children, Wisenberg describes a fantasy game she played with her sister after reading the diary, seeing the popular movie on television, and viewing documentary footage of concentration camps in Hebrew school. From the safety of their walk-in closets in their middle-class suburban Texas home, the empathic pair anxiously imagined that they too were hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex. That Wisenberg saw herself through the eyes of the persecuted as well as persecutors illuminates the complexity of a developing sense of self that alloyed self-blame and survivor's guilt, with historical agency. Manifest in their girls' play is a tension between vigor and stealth. The tension between protecting children from the horrors of the Holocaust and the value placed on knowledge of the past is reflected in their parents' mixed messages about how much their daughters should know. That the sisters played in their pink-infused bedrooms (pink rug and shelf paper) where they also imagined themselves in feminized careers alludes to the gendered limitations they faced being female in the early 1960s.

Stories like this and other types of documentary sources (e.g., diaries, letters, oral histories, etc.) can provide researchers with insight into the meanings and nature of children's play, fantasy lives, and developing sense of self. Questions that might be fruitful for further study are: How has children's play been shaped by historical circumstances? In what ways is children's play natural and universal? How have gender, race, ethnicity, class, etc. influenced children's play?

First launched in 1928, My Weekly Reader sought to make the national news accessible to elementary school children. By the early 1970s grade-specific versions were available for students from preschool to the sixth grade.

My Weekly Reader was the brainchild of Eleanor Murdoch Johnson, the director of elementary schools in York County, PA. Seeking to balance children's preference for myth and fantasy with greater knowledge of world events, Johnson pitched the idea of a weekly newspaper for elementary students to American Education Publications, publisher of Current Events, a newspaper for 6th graders established in 1902. Circulation reached 100,000 the first year and by the end of the 1930s, first through sixth graders had their own edition.

Once a week teachers distributed copies of My Weekly Reader to millions of students in two-thirds of the nation's schools. Students read the 4-8 page educational paper in class or for homework. The articles provided teachers with a springboard for discussion about current events. The oversized weekly printed on newspaper stock included grade-appropriate stories, photographs, illustrations, puzzles, cartoons—even advertisements for books. Some children who loved reading about the space race, examining animal pictures, and laughing at the comics also looked forward to the next issue. While many students found My Weekly Reader to be more like fun than work, others remained uninspired by the flat prose and corny humor.

Despite its claim to present the news with accuracy and fairness, from its inception through the Cold War, the current-events newspaper provided more biased than balanced coverage of international events. News articles avoided issues of conflict (e.g., Civil Rights movement) and instead promoted an anti-Communist, pro-Patriotic Cold War perspective. For much of the twentieth century, My Weekly Reader imaged its readership to be both Caucasian and Christian.

What ideas and kinds of information did My Weekly Reader establish as important for school children to be American citizens? Did My Weekly Reader imagine that male students differed from girls such as the one pictured here? Analyses of the facts, values, customs, and biases in the articles, images, and cartoons in My Weekly Reader is sure to provide researchers with information and insight into the formation of the cultural identity and media literacy of American school children.