Flat Earth

Description

IN 1919, SCHOOLCHILDREN in study halls across America opened another book. Entitled The Boys’ and Girls’ Reader, the delineated volume by prolific children’s writer, Emma Miller Bolenius, was focused on schoolchildren matured nine to twelve.1 In evident fantasy style, it started with a dream. ‘Books are the windows through which the spirit watches out,’ the youngsters were told, and browsing the Reader would resemble climbing a twisting flight of stairs in an incredible pinnacle, peering out of an alternate angled window with each progression that they took. From this otherworldly turret, Bolenius attested, the youngsters would be blessed to receive many different perspectives on the world; pictures of weird nations and incredible heroes beyond regular experience yet genuine none the less. From ‘Home and Neighborhood’, to ‘Nature and the workaday World’, the ‘window book’ was a perusing program with special recommendations for quite a long time of the year.