The billboard shown in the two photographs carries a slogan used widely by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote public interest in the plight of abandoned, orphaned and runaway children living on the streets in cities of Africa, Asia, the Americas and elsewhere. The photograph of Ugandan children standing in front of the billboard wall shows two additional messages, "Street children are children. . . [too?]" and a message in the local language. In addition to raising consciousness in the public about their situation, these organizations provide food, shelter and social services such as medical care, drug abuse counseling, HIV/AIDS prevention education, self-help and vocational training, and educational programs, as well as psychological support. Some of are faith-based organizations representing various religions that run ministries to proselytize among the children or offer religious services together with donated services. As British photographer and geography teacher Bob Jones said about East Africa, "Poverty is a major trigger for the creation of street children. Boys are often forced out of homes in rural areas because a lack of employment opportunities as well as the break up of the family unit through the scourge of HIV/AIDS." Other organizations using the slogan operate in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, Tanzania, and South Africa, to name only a few countries.

These photographs were taken on April 5, 1975 on one of the Pan Am passenger planes that airlifted Vietnamese orphans and Amerasian children of American servicemen and Vietnamese women for Operation Babylift. In the final weeks before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, President Gerald Ford authorized the operation as a gesture to repatriate children who would be American citizens if recognized by their American fathers, ultimately allocating two million dollars to airlift 2,700 orphans to the United States. Children were also airlifted to Australia, Europe, and Canada in separate efforts. Volunteers, soldiers and military nurses accompanied the children on the flights. The first flight, a cargo plane carrying 330 adults and children, crashed shortly after take-off, killing 154 passengers, including 87 of the children. President Ford himself met the first flight that landed safely and carried an infant onto U.S. soil. Accommodations also included cargo planes with rows of cradle boxes strapped to the floors, children arrayed on benches meant to transport goods or soldiers, and harried adults who made do with too little food and supplies for the trip. Some of the participants went on to adopt children from the group. Operation Babylift children, some of whom were disabled, and many of whom suffered from malnutrition, were adopted by American families. When they grew to adulthood, many of the orphans visited Vietnam and sought information about their birth parents, experienced reunions, and learned more about the land and culture of their birth. Today there are support groups both online and in person for the parents and children who shared this experience. These organizations still support individuals seeking knowledge and contact with their birth parents and siblings. The cross-cultural experience of these children both as orphans and as reminders of a foreign war can be compared with the wartime experiences of children in other places. In the case of the Amerasian children, there is significant longitudinal research material from the time of their childhood to their current adulthood, including accounts of their journey’s home, and their efforts to connect with others who share this heritage.

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?

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?

Many children, young people, and adults (especially Americans) are likely to be familiar with this story about the babysitter menaced by the maniac that has gripped the popular imagination for the last half century. First appearing in the early 1960s, the story spread spontaneously among friends, family, and neighbors who claimed it to be a "true." Scholars of modern folklore have since identified it as an urban legend that, like other second-hand stories of its kind, expresses anxieties and contains moral messages.

This urban legend, that by the 1970s became the basis of slasher movies (e.g., Halloween; When a Stranger Calls) and horror fiction, reflected the intense anxieties of: (1) parents worried about the safety of their children while under the care of babysitters; (2) mothers apprehensive about leaving the home for work; (3) fathers frustrated by their decreasing authority; (4) society growing increasingly uneasy about girls’ accelerating rejection of conventional feminine expectations set into motion by the counter culture, second-wave feminism, and the sexual revolution); (5) girls uncertainties about the dangers they faced in their pursuit of independence; and (6) children’s fears of strangers in an increasingly mobile society.

Among the many morals this urban legend issued were those directed at girls. (1) As babysitters girls were exhorted to behave responsibly. (2) Girls were informed that they should conform to gendered expectations (e.g., submission, maternity and domesticity) or else. (3) Girls were warned about the high cost of pursuing independence.

Different versions of this urban legend and many others that involve children and young adults are widely accessible. Students and teachers are likely to serve as a good source for many. Who told them and why? How did different listeners understand the tale? As with folktales and other fictional works, urban legends can be analyzed for the light they shed on children and childhood, generation and gender, among other topics. Urban legends can also be compared across cultures that feature boogey men. Longnose was a Seneca Indian boogeyman who threatened to consume unruly children. Similarly, the pre-Christian folk figure, "Krampus" or "Grampus," has threatened generations of badly behaved children in Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Slovenia, and Italy. In these countries, it is often young men who dress up as the devil figure, rattle chains and scare children on December 5th.

This image found on a wall around the University of Vienna and the Austrian Parliament, in 2008, is a graffiti stencil of Pippi Longstocking, the eponymous fictional character created by the Swedish children's book author, Astrid Lindgren, in 1945. Since then, Pippi Långstrump (in Swedish) has been translated into 90 languages and made into movies and TV series. The image here is based on the portrayal of Pippi by Inger Nilsson, the 9-year-old actress who starred in a 1968 Swedish TV series. Dubbed versions were shown on German TV in 1971 and in the U.S. by 1973 where they became enormously popular.

Though she is known by other names around the world ("Harisnyás Pippi" in Hungarian), Pippi is an iconic figure whose gravity defying red braids, oversized shoes, mismatched socks, home-made clothing, and freckled face represent her playful and plucky world view.

Pippi is an independent, unconventional, anti-authoritarian 9-year-old rebel who lives alone in a villa she shares with her monkey and horse. Although she is a perpetual outsider, Pippi is an advocate for the rights of children, generous with her wealth (though unmaterialistic), and a critic of unquestioned adult authority. She is enormously strong (lifting a horse and flinging policemen) and has a great sense of humor. The self-educated Pippi challenges the status quo by contesting language, logic, and principles as expressed here with her creative answer to the math problem: "2 x 3 = 4."

Illegally stenciled onto a wall in a public space, this graffitied image of Pippi expresses the subversive principles and practices of young adults who have made this "anti-Shirley Temple" into a poster child of the counter culture. As the quintessential gender bender, Pippi is especially beloved by girls and women. But not all: some see her as a poor role model for children.

Pippi's world-wide reach provides unique opportunities for in-depth and cross cultural analyses of Pippi's meanings to children and youth. The enormous variety of sources available (e.g., books, movies, dolls as well as children's drawings and handmade costumes, etc.) make it possible to utilize textual, visual, and material culture methods of research.

The photograph shows boys in Diepsloot Township, Johannesburg, South Africa, and one of the rolling toy creations with which the photo shows them playing. These elaborately designed constructions are made from discarded aluminum or steel, soft drink cans, plastic processed food tubs, and water bottles. The material that holds them together is ordinary wire such as coat-hangers. The fanciful constructions do not merely piece together ready-made components. They are often cut with scissors so as to transform found materials into more fanciful, decorative and dynamic parts. Paint or some type of pigment seems to have been added to the bottle that forms the body of the vehicle, which is embellished with fringe-cut cans in the manner of a chimney or headlamp, and the margarine-tub trailer has a similar fringed can on the rear. The makers have given attention to color, form, movement and functionality in these toys. The children themselves collaborate or even compete in the construction of these toys. The photograph is from C is for Candy, the design blog by Candy Chang, photographer, designer, artist, and urban planner in Helsinki, Finland, who travels widely to collect innovative ideas about design and urban spaces, and is a 2009 TED Global Fellow.

Barbie—who is today the most famous doll in the world—was based on Lilli, a sexy and sassy German doll first produced in 1955. Co-founder of Mattel Inc., Ruth Hander transformed the Teutonic doll from floozy to fashion queen for American girls like her daughter, Barbara, after whom the doll was named. In all other ways, Barbie’s shapely body was nearly indistinguishable from Lilli’s pleasing figure. A decade after Barbie’s debut in 1959, however, Mattel altered her features (e.g., eliminating the arched eyebrows, scarlet cosmetics, sideways glancing eyes) in order to make the teenage fashion model look more youthful and wholesome.

The photographs in "Barbie Turns 21" published in LIFE magazine make it possible to examine Barbie across two transformative decades in the history of American girls and gender. Along with other primary sources, Barbie dolls (including her outfits and accessories) can be "read" or interpreted for what they reveal about the influence of feminism on changing constructions of girlhood between 1959 and 1979.

What meanings can be expressed in a material object? Conduct an analysis of the chronologically arranged Barbies seen here by examining each doll and outfit. What values are embodied in Barbie and encoded in her wardrobe? Are there any cultural contradictions—such as independence v. dependence—embedded in the material culture evidence? In what ways do these ambiguities point to broader ambivalences about changes for girls in postwar America? How does the article’s text support or complicate your understandings?

See also: "What Barbie Dolls Have to Say about Postwar American Culture," http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/idealabs/ap/essays/barbie.htm.

This photo shows a wall covered in "tags" and "throws" along a commonly-traveled side street that runs through the SoHo area of Manhattan, which is one of New York City's major museum and art gallery districts. Tags were the first form of graffiti art, originated in the late 1960s, and are linear signatures quickly written with spray paint and markers, usually taking 15 seconds or less to complete. The larger works are 'throws" (or "throw-ups"), large initials or names quickly spray-painted in a light color with a dark outline in a "bubble" letter style, usually taking a minute or less to complete. Tags and throws are usually the first forms that a new graffiti artist attempts to master, but they are also intended to maintain an artist's competitive visibility.

As with rooftops and schoolyards, street-level buildings became a common place for graffiti artists to paint after the painting on the subways was contained in the mid-1980s. Like the sides of the subway trains, the walls became a visual record of an ongoing competition and conversation among graffiti writers. The streets are the most risky place for writers to work, hence the necessity of quickness in execution, and it also explains why there are very few of the more elaborate pieces visible in most areas of the city.