Primary Sources by Region:

North America

Icon for a Primary Source

This short story by fiction writer, S.L. Wisenberg, sheds light on the influence of Anne Frank on the imagination and identity of Jewish girls growing up in postwar America. Written from a child's point of view and in the language of children,… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

First launched in 1928, My Weekly Reader sought to make the national news accessible to elementary school children. By the early 1970s grade-specific versions were available for students from preschool to the sixth grade. My Weekly Reader was the… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

In 1928, Martha Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, an anthropological work based on field work she had conducted on female adolescents in Samoa. In Mead's book that became a best seller and unleashed a storm of controversy, she argued that it was… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

Published in 1858, Der Struwwelpeter (Shaggy Peter) is a German children's book first published anonymously under a different title in 1845 by Heinrich Hoffman. Hoffman, a Frankfurt physician and father, wrote the book after realizing that there were… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

Many children, young people, and adults (especially Americans) are likely to be familiar with this story about the babysitter menaced by the maniac that has gripped the popular imagination for the last half century. First appearing in the early… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

Minidoka incarceration camp, near Twin Falls in southern Idaho, was one of 10 incarceration camps run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) that held citizens and non-citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. The 33,000 acres of arid desert… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

Barbie—who is today the most famous doll in the world—was based on Lilli, a sexy and sassy German doll first produced in 1955. Co-founder of Mattel Inc., Ruth Hander transformed the Teutonic doll from floozy to fashion queen for American girls… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

This photo shows a wall covered in "tags" and "throws" along a commonly-traveled side street that runs through the SoHo area of Manhattan, which is one of New York City's major museum and art gallery districts. Tags were the first form of graffiti… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

A main goal for almost all graffiti artists is to be seen by other artists or appreciative peers, as well as the typical New York City passers-by. In the mid-1980s, after more than 15 years effort, the New York City Transit Authority was successful… [more]

Icon for a Primary Source

From left to right, this photograph shows four graffiti artists at work on a collaborative "production" in a Bronx schoolyard: DEATH, NIC 1, MEX, and NOX. A "production" is a planned, multi-artist work typically unified by a visual theme in the… [more]