An experienced teacher of reading and writing and an award-winning historian, E. Jennifer Monaghan brings to vibrant life the process of learning to read and write in colonial America. Ranging throughout the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia, she examines the instruction of girls and boys, Native Americans and enslaved Africans, the privileged and the poor, revealing the sometimes wrenching impact of literacy acquisition on the lives of learners. For the most part, religious motives underlay reading instruction in colonial America, while secular motives led to writing instruction. Monaghan illuminates the history of these activities through a series of deeply researched and readable case studies. An Anglican missionary battles mosquitoes and loneliness to teach the New York Mohawks to write in their own tongue. Puritan fathers model scriptural reading for their children as they struggle with bereavement. Boys in writing schools, preparing for careers in counting houses, wield their quill pens in the difficult task of mastering a "good hand." Benjamin Franklin learns how to compose essays with no teacher but himself. Young orphans in Georgia write precocious letters to their benefactor, George Whitefield, while schools in South Carolina teach enslaved black children to read but never to write. As she tells these stories, Monaghan clears new pathways in the analysis of colonial literacy. She pioneers in exploring the implications of the separation of reading and writing instruction, a topic that still resonates in today's classrooms. Monaghan argues that major improvements occurred in literacy instruction and acquisition after about 1750, visible in rising rates of signature literacy. Spelling books were widely adopted as they key text for teaching young children to read; prosperity, commercialism, and a parental urge for gentility aided writing instruction, benefiting girls in particular. And a gentler vision of childhood arose, portraying children as more malleable than sinful. It promoted and even commercialized a new kind of children's book designed to amuse instead of convert, laying the groundwork for the "reading revolution" of the new republic.

The author reconstructs for us colonial life by describing in great detail manners, customs, dress, homes, and child life.

Paints a picture of life of children in the American colonies: daily chores, routines, and play; distinct religious and social attitudes that dictated how children were raised and what they were taught in New England and in the South.

In the early 17th century, all the world knew of North America came from reports of the earliest European explorers. By the end of the 18th century, the world knew America as the United States—a country whose earliest years were shaped by colonialism. This historical, non-fiction text examines life in Colonial America through the eyes of the kids who lived there. Age-appropriate language takes readers inside the clothes, toys, schools, and ways of life in the 17th and 18th centuries. Fact boxes provide opportunities for additional learning. A glossary and index round out the text, completing a comprehensive learning experience.

Spanning three generations, an American colonial family of eight is shown in period attire in a variety of situations as they live out the drama of the American Revolution and its aftermath. The 32 authentic costumes are further enhanced by Tom Tierney's well-researched and scrupulously accurate text. Together they offer fashion and costume historians a precise, full-color view of prevailing fashions and trends of the late eighteenth century. Paper doll enthusiasts of all ages will delight in these finely rendered figures in typical Colonial raiment, while aficionados of Americana will follow with rapt attention this sartorial record of one family's progress through pre- and post-Revolution to a final frontier expedition.