Bøger af Pamela Riney-Kehrberg

The story of childhood on America's farms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Always Plenty to Do is a journey back to America's breadbasket. Fleshing out the contours of everyday life, it reveals what farm children saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt--and how they worked, played, and learned. Drawing upon rich primary sources from the Great Plains and Midwest, Riney-Kehrberg combines biography and historical narrative to invite young readers into the nation's rural past. Always Plenty to Do provides a strong, basic background in America's farm heritage through the eyes of children who experienced it. Readers will taste the biscuits and lard that mothers packed in lunch pails, and feel the weight of the buckets of water that children carried from the well. In addition to physical and technological differences (what life was like before the Internet, or even cars and electricity), Always Plenty to Do addresses emotional differences, such as the substantial responsibility children bore for the farm's success and their family's well-being.

When did the kid who strolled the wooded path, trolled the stream, played pick-up ball in the back forty turn into the child confined to the mall and the computer screen? How did "e;Go out and play!"e; go from parental shooing to prescription? When did parents become afraid to send their children outdoors? Surveying the landscape of childhood from the Civil War to our own day, this environmental history of growing up in America asks why and how the nation's children have moved indoors, often losing touch with nature in the process.In the time the book covers, the nation that once lived in the country has migrated to the city, a move whose implications and ramifications for youth Pamela Riney-Kehrberg explores in chapters concerning children's adaptation to an increasingly urban and sometimes perilous environment. Her focus is largely on the Midwest and Great Plains, where the response of families to profound economic and social changes can be traced through its urban, suburban, and rural permutationsas summer camps, scouting, and nature education take the place of children's unmediated experience of the natural world. As the story moves into the mid-twentieth century, and technology in the form of radio and television begins to exert its allure, Riney-Kehrberg brings her own experience to bear as she documents the emerging tug-of-war between indoors and outdoorsand between the preferences of children and parents. It is a battle that children, at home with their electronic amenities, seem to have wonan outcome whose meaning and likely consequences this timely book helps us to understand.

A significant contribution to the environmental and social history of the Depression in rural and small town America. Riney-Kehrberg illustrates the exhaustion of those who faced year after year of economic and ecological devastation, and the creativity with which they met these obstacles.