20th Century

Children's Literature - Joni Lucas

As the end of the century draws near, this folder of information gives children a visual history lesson about events of the 20th century. A mixture of black-and-white and color pictures featuring images such as Lenin's communist party identification card, Vietnam War demonstrations, Tiananmen Square, Martin Luther King Jr., the Titanic, a page from the diary of Anne Frank, newspaper headlines announcing the assassination of John F. Kennedy and a poster advertising Coca-Cola help make significant episodes in history a little more accessible to children. On the back of each picture is a short paragraph explaining the incident and its historical context. The pictures can be cut out and displayed on walls, and there is also a color poster suitable for hanging. The folder offers lots of opportunities to discuss highlighted events with parents and grandparents who lived during many of these historic occasions such as the first man walking on the moon, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall or the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. History is often described as boring but with this clever folder designed for the sound-bite age, it just might have a fighting chance.