A biography of Alice M. Jordan, who headed children’s work at the Boston Public Library (BPL) from 1902 to 1940, is long overdue. Daughter of a Maine sea captain and a Massachusetts schoolteacher, she was one of the pioneering generation of children’s librarians, women who entered the field when salaries were low, progressive ideals high, academic credentials spotty, and the drive to professionalization was revolutionizing librarianship and education. Modest and unassuming, high-school graduate Jordan worked effectively to improve educational opportunities for children and their librarians alike. She taught at the Simmons Library School, helped create the BPL Training School, founded the New England Round Table of Children’s Librarians (NERTCL), and mentored Bertha Mahony Miller, founder of The Horn Book Magazine. She had a national reputation among children’s book editors and librarians for her critical acumen, clear writing, and astute advice. Locally, she networked tirelessly with Boston educators, negotiated the placement of qualified children’s librarians in all BPL branches, and trained a generation of gifted youth workers—all from a desk in the middle of a busy children’s room. She left a legacy of high standards for children’s reading, storytelling, and reference services. This biography draws on archival materials including Jordan’s correspondence with poet Louise Imogen Guiney and Horn Book editor Miller; BPL memos and reports; and 1979 interviews with Jordan trainees. I have shown her life and achievement in the context of social history, from late nineteenth-century women’s economic opportunities to early twentieth-century developments in librarianship, especially at the BPL. Each chapter has a brief list of milestones in Jordan and U.S. history.

“Superb, scrupulously researched . . . a comprehensive narrative for understanding the changing reception of Little Women.” —Gregory Eiselein, coeditor of The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia The hit Broadway show of 1912. The lost film of 1919. Katharine Hepburn, as Jo, sliding down a banister in George Cukor’s 1933 movie. Mark English’s shimmering 1967 illustrations. Jo—this time played by Sutton Foster—belting “I'll be / astonishing” in the 2004 Broadway musical flop. These are only some of the markers of the afterlife of Little Women. There’s also the nineteenth-century child who wrote, “If you do not ...make Laurie marry Beth, I will never read another of your books as long as I live.” Not to mention Miss Manners, a Little Women devotee, who announced that the book taught her an important life lesson: “Although it’s very nice to have two clean gloves, it’s even more important to have a little ink on your fingers.” In The Afterlife of Little Women, Beverly Lyon Clark, a leading authority on children’s literature, maps the reception of Louisa May Alcott’s timeless novel, first published in 1868. Clark divides her discussion into four historical periods. The first covers the novel’s publication and massive popularity in the late nineteenth century. In the second era—the first three decades of the twentieth century—the novel becomes a nostalgic icon of the domesticity of a previous century, while losing status among the literary and scholarly elite. In its mid-century afterlife, from 1930-1960, Little Women reaches a low in terms of its critical reputation but remains a well-known piece of Americana within popular culture. The book concludes with a long chapter on Little Women’s afterlife from the 1960s to the present, a period in which the reading of the book seems to decline, while scholarly attention expands dramatically and popular echoes continue to proliferate. Drawing on letters and library records as well as reviews, plays, operas, film and television adaptations, spinoff novels, translations, Alcott biographies, and illustrations, Clark demonstrates how the novel resonates with both conservative family values and progressive feminist ones. She grounds her story in criticism of children’s literature, book history, cultural studies, feminist criticism, and adaptation studies—in a book that is “fascinating, cover-to-cover, for the many readers of Little Women still out there, whether scholar or generally interested fan” (Studies in the Novel).

This book serves as both a textbook and reference for faculty and students in LIS courses on storytelling and a professional guide for practicing librarians, particularly youth services librarians in public and school libraries. Storytelling: Art and Technique serves professors, students, and practitioners alike as a textbook, reference, and professional guide. It provides practical instruction and concrete examples of how to use the power of story to build literacy and presentation skills, as well as to create community in those same educational spaces. This text illustrates the value of storytelling, covers the history of storytelling in libraries, and offers valuable guidance for bringing stories to contemporary listeners, with detailed instructions on the selection, preparation, and presentation of stories. It also provides guidance around the planning and administration of a storytelling program. Topics include digital storytelling, open mics and slams, and the neuroscience of storytelling. An extensive and helpful section of resources for the storyteller is included in an expanded Part V of this edition.

Marcus offers this animated history of the visionaries--editors, illustrators, and others--whose books have transformed American childhood and American culture.

An illustrated biography of the innovative geniuses who created children's classics