http://www.iln.org.uk/

ILN Publishing Group

July 2010

The Picture Archive of The Illustrated London News (ILN) is most readily accessed through the website of the Mary Evans Picture Library. In principle, the Archive still has its own website, but in practice it is likely to prove inaccessible. Since 2007, following a change of ownership of the ILN Publishing Group, the archive has been housed at Mary Evans. This transfer is unfortunate in some respects, since Mary Evans is a commercial rather than an educational organization and it charges fees to download images. The original site also had extensive background material on the history and printing processes of the ILN that does not appear in the new setting. Nonetheless, one can browse the watermarked images of the Mary Evans Picture Library for research purposes – and its ILN section now has more material than the original site, as new pictures are scanned into it. And of course one can always move from the ILN to scan the whole Mary Evans collection.

The story goes that Herbert Ingram, who founded the ILN in 1842, noticed as a newsagent in Nottingham that when newspapers included pictures, their sales increased. Most journals at this point were still grudging in their resort to illustrations, so when Ingram moved to London and founded a paper committed to lavish use of images, he was immediately successful.

Pictures of dramatic events such as the 1848 Revolution in France and the Crimean War (1853-6) helped its reputation for exciting journalism. By the 1860s, the ILN was selling 300,000 copies per week, far outstripping the circulation of conventional newspapers. To begin with Ingram printed only black-and-white wood engravings, but the ILN later made use of color, and, especially from the 1920s, photographs. Ingram also started a policy of hiring famous illustrators and top writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The archive has pictures from issues running from 1842 to 1971, including those from other journals in the "Great Eight" that came together in the 1920s, the best known apart from the ILN being The Tatler.

The search facility allows users to opt for ILN images only. Each of the 10,000 or so in the archive is well referenced with a number, date, description and further details. Searching under children brings up an eclectic collection of 282 images. Some only incidentally concern this heading, for example when King George V appears because there is a mention in the text to his six children.

Others are on the whimsical side: "Caught!" (ref. 10216446) shows children discovered by their parents in the larder scoffing jam from a huge jar. The text informs us that "sentimental or humorous scenes such as these were a popular addition to the ILN, especially over the Christmas period."

The royal families of Europe feature prominently as well as novelties, such as "Children being treated with ultra-violet light" (ref . 10216701). However Ingram, a Liberal MP, had some sympathy with the poor. Hence there are little clusters of pictures depicting children during such events as the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, the United States Civil War, and Jewish migration to London during the 1900s. "Children searching for potatoes" during the Irish famine (ref. 10220183), for example, conveys the desperation of their situation effectively.

More cheerful images from everyday life include "Audience of Children at a London Music Hall, 1882" (ref. 102216500) and "Children at the Circus, 1948," (ref. 10219941). There are also pictures of school strikes, somehow always with a portly-looking policeman in attendance (e.g. from 1889, demanding "shorter hours" and "no cane," (ref. 10219381), a Montessori school (ref. 10215457) and London youth clubs during the 1880s (e.g. 10220713).

In sum, the archive has a variety of delights for the historian of childhood, and a well-organized website, though no great depth of coverage or supporting material.

Colin Heywood

University of Nottingham (U.K.)

The archive has a variety of delights for the historian of childhood, and a well-organized website, though no great depth of coverage or supporting material.

http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/

British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent

June 2010

Cartoons is a website produced by the British Cartoon Archive, a collection based at the University of Kent (England), dedicated to cartooning in newspapers and other forms of publication in Britain over the past century. It has a collection of around 150,000 cartoons drawn by approximately 300 cartoonists. This site provides students and teachers alike with a way of enlivening their approach to British political and social history as well as the history of children and youth. The website has a huge amount of material available, and it is well organized to help the researcher find cartoons from a particular cartoonist, or on a particular theme.

The alphabetical list of cartoonists in the Biographies section will include some names familiar to anyone brought up in Britain – and many others they will never have heard of. Fortunately the names of the most famous ones (and the most important newspapers that published them) are specified in the Search section, which helps to orientate the researcher. The site gives a brief biography of each artist, written with a nice light touch. For example, we learn that Barry Fantoni was thrown out of Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1958, accused of "wrecking the home of one of the teachers in a state of drunken madness." Fortunately for him, he was able to continue at the renowned Slade School of Art, and achieve fame and fortune as a pop artist as well as a cartoonist. A particular feature of the Archive is the Carl Giles Collection donated by the artist in 2005. This reviewer must confess to looking forward to seeing his cartoon in the Sunday Express each week during the 1950s and 1960s. His most famous creation was the Giles Family, a "bizarre fantasy," according to the biography, "of a working-class household living a comfortable middle-class life." The outstanding character was surely Grandma Giles, a ferocious looking character whose "anarchic vitality" led to her being heavily into drinking and betting. Also familiar to many will be the figure of Andy Capp, drawn by Reg Smythe under orders to appeal to readers in the north of England. Andy Capp, according to the biography of Smythe, emerged as the "flat-capped, pigeon-fancying, beer-swilling, work-shy northerner," with views on marriage going back to the "Neolithic Age."

The Search facility allows one to choose among numerous subjects. Each cartoon includes: a reference number, caption, embedded text (picking out detail not easily read in the reproduction), notes, the people depicted, and the subjects covered. The very abundance of the material may be a problem, especially as much of it will probably not appear useful to the modern reader. There are, for example, 6,099 entries under the heading of Children. In some cases, the cartoonist wishes to comment on events in contemporary society. W.K. Haselden, for example, turned out dozens of cartoons under this heading during the 1900s. Concerns over the declining birth rate in 1905 led the cartoonist to envisage a future in which babies become rare specimens, exhibited in cages and labelled "born in the managerie" (ref. WHO1490). In other cases, it is a matter of poking fun at politicians by depicting them as juveniles. "A row in the play-ground," by John Doyle, reduces politics in the 1830s to squabbling between Melbourne, Peel, Wellington and others (ref. mudyx9t). The cataloguers have provided numerous headings related to childhood and youth, such as girls, childhood romance, schools, schoolboys, juvenile delinquency, and mothers. Again the researcher will need to sift through the material to separate cartoons focused on that heading in particular from those with only a passing allusion.

The site includes advice on creating a group of cartoons as a teaching pack, to illustrate a particular theme. It provides a number of these but it is doubtless best to create your own, as the site advises. The site also points out in a section on Teaching Aids that "sophisticated searching" allows one to see, for example, what was happening on a specific day in history, by assembling all the cartoons that appeared in the newspapers on that day, or to grasp how politicians or major personalities (such as Princess Diana, with 321 entries) were perceived. This section promises five "resource packages" linked to themes in the British schools curriculum, and resources to help in the reading and analysis of cartoons. There is a section on Articles to help the teacher or researcher, though it remained obstinately stuck on "G" whenever consulted by this reviewer.

Overall, it is clear that a great deal of thought and effort has gone into making the vast collection of material available to the public, and into supporting the cartoons with relevant background information. The standard of presentation and the layout are excellent. It will need an awareness of the political stance of the newspapers involved to make much sense, and a feel for popular culture in Britain. Still, it is a cornucopia of delights.

Colin Heywood

The University of Nottingham

This site provides students and teachers alike with a way of enlivening their approach to British political and social history as well as the history of children and youth.

http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/

The Children's Society

June 2010

Hidden Lives Revealed: A Virtual Archive – Children in Care 1881-1918 is an attractive and well-organized website. It bills itself as an "intriguing encounter with children who were in the care of the Children's Society in late Victorian and early 20th-century Britain."

At its heart is a collection of photographs, case files, and learning materials from one of the many philanthropic societies dedicated to the care of children in Britain at this period. Most of the archive material was previously unavailable to the public, as might be expected with files giving personal details of children who were in care – though of course the anonymity of the children is respected. "No other Internet archive," it asserts, "gives you the opportunity to browse through such unique material – a kind of resource which has the type of information not recorded elsewhere."

Perhaps this is so. In any case, it can claim quite reasonably that it offers something for those studying Victorian history or for university students interested in social work. The Waifs and Strays' Society, later known as the Children's Society, is rather overshadowed in the history books by the Barnardo Homes: further proof, if needed, of the aggressive publicity campaigns that have earned Dr. Barnardo a certain notoriety among historians. 1

A brief History of the Waifs and Strays' Society in a section of the website entitled Articles usefully provides background information. (A link to the website of today's The Children's Society provides further details for those interested.) The Society was founded in London in 1881 by a civil servant and Sunday school teacher named Edward Rudolf.

Rudolf aimed to set up a central home for the poorest and most neglected children cared for by the Church of England. It made a particular point of integrating its homes with the local community, aided by the parish organizations of the Anglican church. Other articles, incidentally, give a short biography of the founder, and introductions to poverty, juvenile delinquency and reformatories during the Victorian era. There is a concise and reasonably up-to-date Bibliography in these areas as well. 2

Photographs is divided into 12 sections, covering such areas as the work, schooling, pets, clothing, illnesses and disabilities, and sporting activities. Each photograph is carefully documented with a date, location, creator, and description. The Homes includes photographs and a detailed description. By 1918 the society had a total of 175 homes. These photographs inevitably look a bit grim now, though the society did have a policy of providing a family atmosphere in homes of around 10 children aged five to 14.

The sample of about 150 Case Files will interest those who want a feel for historical research. Each one contains the detailed application form, including information on family background, health, education, current circumstances, and reasons for application. There is also interesting supplementary material in the form of personal letters, photographs, and school reports. All of these documents are reproduced in the original, and (mercifully) transcribed in print form. They can be browsed by keyword, running from "Abandonment" to "World War I ."

An example under "Running Away" documents a girl who ran away from a home in Croydon, claiming ill treatment and concerns about having her hair cut off because of lice. The file even includes a reproduction of a Christmas card sent by her brother in 1891. Finally, there is a collection of Learning Materials, with exercises to find out "what it was like to be REALLY poor in Victorian and Edwardian times." A sub-section, entitled Rescued from Poverty has, for example, a fact file and questions for students concerning life on the streets and "who would you choose?"

Inevitably with this kind of website, the society responsible gives a positive view of its activities. One might wish to ask further questions such as: whether the laundries and other commercial activities in the homes risked becoming exploitative, the relations between children and those running the homes, and why the photographs suggest that all the girls became maids and the boys soldiers! All the same, the Society is to be commended for providing a very approachable educational site, and for its innovative approach to publicizing its existence.

Colin Heywood

The University of Nottingham

At its heart is a collection of photographs, case files, and learning materials from one of the many philanthropic societies dedicated to the care of children in Britain at this period.

http://southseas.nla.gov.au/

National Library of Australia and Centre for Cross-Cultural Research

April 2010

A useful site for the study of children in the Pacific Basin is The South Seas, a resource database dedicated to European voyages from 1760 to 1800. Currently in its first phase of development, the site makes accessible online for singular or comparative research the full manuscripts of the journals of James Cook, John Banks, and Sydney Parkinson from the Endeavor voyxage of 1768-1771. Also available are all three volumes of John Hawkesworth's Account of the Voyages undertaken. . . in the Southern Hemisphere. . . (1773). While this is currently a literary resource database only, there are links for future access to the National Library of Australia's (NLA) collections of historical images, rare maps and drawings from this period.

Easily navigable for browsing, the site has all the key headings intuitively placed. It is well indexed and, while basic, functions adequately with manageable returns. Although not part of the historical collection, there are a few maps presented that are particularly interesting as they chart the day-by-day progress of Cook's Endeavor. The South Seas Companion is the main searching page from which you can browse such topics as: Concepts, Parties, Cultural Artifacts, Natural Phenomena, People, Places, Repositories, and Functions. Unfortunately, these are not clickable and one must browse alphabetically within each heading. Thus it is not really browsing and is actually quite time consuming to achieve a real overview using this method. There are four different search menus catering to different research needs, Keyword, Structured, Bibliography and Archival Sources.

South Seas provides primary sources for research on the people encountered on Cook's voyages, by himself, Banks and Parkinson. From the home page keyword search for "child," for example, there are 78 results that include original sketches and journal descriptions of children, their place and function Tahiti and New Zealand. In James Morrison's Account of Tahiti, he describes the rituals associated with the birth of a new child, feeding and touching taboos, and filial obligations and rights.

Because of the way South Seas has designed the keyword search, "child" will also return other results such as, "child-like" and "childish," which typically refer to adult behavior not children's. As well, results for specific terms, such as "boy" actually include all words containing the consecutive letters, including "boys" and "boyer." With 63 returns under the keyword "girl or girls," there is an interesting variety of information indexed with topics ranging from tattooing to cannibalism and the "rites of Venus." Considering the character of these resources written by men on long sea voyages, it should come as no surprise that most of the references to girls are of a sexual nature. As with all texts describing first contact, what the men chose to write about, the judgments they made, and the situations they created is more revealing of their own characters and culture than the one they are "observing."

While South Seas is full of primary references and resources useful for research, it is not geared towards teaching. There are no tools, widgets, or favorites to assist in saving searches, returns or sharing the images or data. This is described as the first phase of a greater project that the NLA is undertaking to create a clearinghouse of resources related to European voyaging in the South Pacific and cross-cultural contact. Yet it is not quite complete as there are several pages in the "About" section still being built. The Cultural Atlas section has maps available to track the path of the voyages, the images section has this message on its homepage: "We aim also to have a multimedia-guide to using South Seas to discover historical images and rare maps online here in early 2004."

Much of the true functionality of this website has yet to be achieved. However, judging from the year of the last updates, a second phase may not be forthcoming.

Ashley E. Remer

Girl Museum

A useful site for the study of children in the Pacific Basin is The South Seas, a resource database dedicated to European voyages from 1760 to 1800.

http://www.bdmhistory.com

Chris Crawford and Stephan Hansen

January 2010

The images and documents presented on this website consist of material on Das Bund Deutscher Maedel in der Hitlerjugend, or "League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth." This organization for girls and young women was founded in the 1920s and became part of the Hitler Youth in 1932. At that time, all other scouting and religious groups were disbanded and their membership amalgamated into the BDM. While members included girls as young as 10 years of age, the site states that "Most of the League's leaders were women with completed university degrees or vocational training who were between their mid-20s and their late 30s in age." Many remained in the League until they got married, pregnant, or went to work. Another organization, Das Werk Glaube und Schoenheit, or "the Belief and Beauty Society," that became affiliated with the BDM, emphasized aesthetic movement activities, arts and crafts, fashion, home economics, and childcare.

However spare, the BDM site design is consistent and the materials are easily accessed. There are hundreds of images, significant texts of the movement, printed illustrations and drawings, and photos of artifacts. The explanatory materials, in which historian Chris Crawford has taken on a leading role, include translated personal narratives, background, and descriptions of the structure and leadership of daily and family life.

The materials were posted by a group of historians who are also re-enactors of the BDM, and state that the site represents an under-researched aspect of the period. A prominently placed disclaimer clarifies that the site does not represent a neo-Nazi position, but is intended to be historical and non-political, for the use of re-enactors and historians. One of the motivations for constructing the site is to expand understanding of the BDM beyond its association with the Hitler Youth, and the photographs, booklets, magazines, and other evidence shows this multi-faceted function. It was the only organization available for German girls, and fulfilled many associative and recreational functions. The girls went on trips, camped out, played sports, and created theatrical productions, crafts, and fashions. The photographs indicate that like those in modern girls' organizations elsewhere, many girls bonded with each other and enjoyed BDM activities.

The website notes that it differed sharply from the Hitler Youth for boys in that it did not include paramilitary training, and only awarded medical badges. The organization began much like the Girl Scouts in terms of its focus on bodily exercise, life and outdoor skills, and community activities, justifying these as a response to more sedentary contemporary lifestyles for youth in contrast to the hard work imposed on children in earlier times. The difference is that membership and participation under the National Socialist government was not voluntary, but compulsory. This quotation from the 1940 Youth Leadership pamphlet is evidence of the tone of the organization: "You, too, belong to our leader. He asks of you, and of all within our community, that we grow up to become obedient, service-minded and dutiful, and live in comradeship with those in our community. This is why you join the Jungmaedel League at the age of 10. Aside from your duties at home and in school, service in the Jungmaedel now also asks you to do your part voluntarily and joyfully."

On one level, the site illustrates German Christian girlhood under the Nazis. The historical materials provide glimpses of girls' activities and appearance, and the primary source images and text illustrate the friendships among young women and girls. It also depicts the ways in which a modern state could appropriate girlhood. A quotation from the BDM Service Manual indicates the way in which the state regimented even the most personal motivations to be healthful, beyond what might be classified as public health concerns: "Sport should not become a goal in itself with us; we do not want to break records; we perform bodily exercises in order to become happy and healthy members of the national community. 'Community and homeland solidarity' should be the motto of our bodily exercise regimen." 1 A hand-written dedication in the book, which may have been the printed guidance of a high official, referred to the pleasure of selfless service to the nation. A section on the Ostdienst—work with resettled Germans in eastern Poland—as well as some images of war relief work shows the transition from relatively carefree beginnings to doing quite demanding work on behalf of the Reich. The materials are wide-ranging, from the most prosaic images of girls on outings to snapshots of girls thrust into situations that went beyond normal expectations of young womanhood, but were seen as necessary in the later years of the war.

Susan Douglass

George Mason University

One of the motivations for constructing the site is to expand understanding of the BDM beyond its association with the Hitler Youth, and the photographs, booklets, magazines, and other evidence shows this multi-faceted function.

http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz/

Alexander Turnbull Library

January 2010

Timeframes is the image database from the Alexander Turnbull Library, a division of the National Library of New Zealand. The digital collection contains just over 42,000 images, ranging from publications, manuscripts, music, maps, sound recordings, ephemera (including posters, programs advertisements), photographs, cartoons, paintings, drawings and prints. It focuses on the geography, social and natural history of New Zealand, the Pacific and Antarctica from the point of European contact (c. 1642) to the present.

The homepage is user-friendly, yet some items, such as titles and images are not linked, which seems like an odd oversight. They become decorative rather than functional. If you register, the features are much more rewarding. There five top Browse categories organized alphabetically according to Name of people or organizations, Place, Subject, Māori Iwi/Hāpu (Tribe), and Genre of media, style and techniques. Under the A-Z Subject Browse top heading of "children," there are 831 results that include a large variety of sub-categories, from children sewing, to children - tobacco use and children with disabilities. It seems unlikely that all of the images that include children are returned by this search. Another major drawback is that only one search is allowed at a time. Opening multiple windows within the same session to run several searches simultaneously crashes the database.

The basic keyword search for "child" returned over 590 hits, while "youth" only 276. These are quite low considering the size of the database. While incongruously, there were 619 results for "girl" and 705 for "boy," thus these keywords are not consistently cross-referenced with "child." Some of the filtering is a bit generic, but like most research databases, trial and error will reveal how keywords, categories and cross-referencing has been applied by the data masters. Not being able to click on the titles themselves is a flaw throughout the site that can be frustrating. However, Timeframes is in the process of being upgraded with new features, including better search filters and image tagging abilities, which will add to its functionality.

The descriptive text record associated with each image is a part TAPUHI, the database of unpublished (original) manuscript and picture collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library. As much of the Turnbull collection is based on donated materials, it sometimes lacks useful information. For example, the image of film writer/directors Ann and Jane Campion barely includes basic information although these women are certainly around to add to the public record. Similarly, while there are many family and school albums that show candid as well as posed photographs, useful information is at a minimum. There are additional searching capabilities on the TAPUHI database for items that may not yet be online with Timeframes.

With such a variety of media available, a general search sometimes proves to be a bit too expansive. For example, the topic of "child abuse" yields primarily political cartoons. If one is familiar with the current legislation and the debate surrounding it, then these cartoons become valid, but without that context, they seem either disturbing or irrelevant. Narrowing the search by media in the Advanced Search menu can be a little more time consuming, but leads to more easily digestible returns. While the selection of images is in no way comprehensive compared to what is available in the actual collections, the ATL are readily responsive in assisting with researchers' queries. The quality of the images is quite high; most are print ready without any further adjustments.

In keeping with New Zealand's emphasis on biculturalism and adherence to the Treaty of Waitangi, there is information available in English and Māori. Teachers and researchers need to be aware, however, that the language of the database assumes some degree of familiarity with New Zealand culture. "Timeframes includes items of cultural value to Māori people and other New Zealanders. These taonga are carefully selected and carry the mana of their iwi (people), whichever medium may be represented." Definitions of such important cultural concepts as 'taonga' and 'mana' do not follow the disclaimer.

While any database that includes culturally sensitive material, Timeframes itself reveals a contemporary digital New Zealand negotiating its colonial past. In some cases the framework and data reveals continuing issues of perception and memory that affect the Nation as a whole. For example, pictures of Māori children are categorized as ethnographic by default and are not included in the general New Zealand children category.

Timeframes is solely for researching with no mandate for educational programming as such. With typical useful features, such as saved searches, search histories, and a favorite image basket for items to be reviewed or ordered later, teachers or students can create lists of individual items for further research or to share. Ultimately, while there are hundreds of images of children, the database can stand huge improvements on its teaching features and cross-referencing. Otherwise, it is not very functional as a tool for educators.

As a supplement, Matapihi, a database in English and Māori that includes images and information from many New Zealand cultural institutions including Timeframes, can be used to make a more comprehensive search. As well the National Library of New Zealand has general curriculum resources for teachers and students.

Ashley E. Remer

Girl Museum

It focuses on the geography, social and natural history of New Zealand, the Pacific and Antarctica from the point of European contact (c.1642) to the present.

http://online.ushmm.org/lodzchildren/

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

January 2010

Allowing students to be active learners and researchers is an important and integral component of teaching. The Children of the Lodz Ghetto website hosted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum attempts to provide a hands-on location for such an enterprise. It does so by having distinct areas on its home webpage wherein students can begin tackling a difficult problem: locating missing children who were deported and living in the Lodz (Poland) Ghetto during World War II.

A valuable book of student signatures was given to the ghetto's leader, Chaim Rumkowski, during the Jewish High Holidays in September 1941, two years after the start of the war. This book serves as the foundational research tool, the objective of which is to account for the fates of thousands of students from the ghetto in the following years. The website encourages researchers to try and obtain as much biographical information as possible about the young people listed in the book.

Today's students are given step-by-step instructions in beginning the research, asked to continue to seek out additional information and, probably most importantly, asked to collaborate to review and refine the information collected by others. Thus, the site wants to convey the collective nature of the research enterprise.

Five tabs are located under the webpage's title: "Home," "Student List," "Tutorial," "Research tips," and "My Research." The "How to Use this Site" feature is critical for students with a limited knowledge of the Holocaust. It provides a detailed guide on how to go about beginning the research, with crucial links to websites related to the Lodz ghetto within the Holocaust museum's online sources. These resources will help students proceed with their individual research. An alphabetical list of the more than 1,500 names of children (out of the more than 13,000 children who signed the book) is provided under the "Student List" tab.

The website is relatively easy to navigate. However, the design is a bit cluttered on the home page with duplicate areas for moving to "Research Tip" and "Lists of Students." One potential stumbling block for students conducting research is when they arrive at the student list. It appears that information is available on students in the Lodz Ghetto and subsequent deportation. But locating information beyond deportation appears difficult to obtain. Perhaps additional links within the Holocaust Museum's own website or outside links to other Holocaust-related web pages may encourage students to continue the research beyond the basic information located on the "Lodz Ghetto Inhabitants' Database." Naturally, the basic data needs to be entered before proceeding to further information. However, in order to continue to engage students in the importance and significance of their research enterprise, having additional links that contextualize the information beyond data entry would be helpful.

The alphabetical student lists, with names highlighted of those that are currently being researched, is very user friendly. It is encouraging that when additional biographical information is obtained on an individual, it generates online discussion and comments, perhaps in some cases leading to additional subsequent research on the person.

The website does teach a prospective student the value of beginning research with basic information before proceeding on to additional research. It also teaches that the enterprise is laborious, often perhaps tedious, and collaborative, but, in the end, is critical in enlarging one's understanding of the complexity of the Holocaust.

This website reinforces the idea that beyond the numberless victims, real people, often children the ages of the current student-researchers themselves, were hapless victims. Bringing this message down to the individual level makes the research students do ultimately much more meaningful.

Marion Deshmukh

George Mason University

This website reinforces the idea that beyond the numberless victims, real people, often children the ages of the current student-researchers themselves, were hapless victims. Bringing this message down to the individual level makes the research students do ultimately much more meaningful.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/children/

Columbia University

September 2009

Children's Drawings of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 were produced by children evacuated from the war zones to 'colonies' in other parts of Spain and in southern France. The drawings depict subjects such as the bombing of villages, battle scenes with tanks and planes, events during the evacuations, and daily life in the colonies (or the past). A combined effort by the Spanish Board of Education and the Carnegie Institute of Spain led to the assemblage of a large collection of drawings during the war. Some of these drawings were sent to the United States in 1938 by Joseph A. Weissberger to support a campaign by the American Friends Service Committee to raise funds for further evacuations. The Quaker organization published a collection of 60 of drawings, under the title of And They Still Draw Pictures! (c. 1938), with a prologue by Aldous Huxley. Subsequently the drawings were dispersed among a number of institutions, the majority (609) went to the University of California at San Diego. The 153 drawings accessible on this web site were bequeathed to Columbia University in 1938 by a benefactor who, it is assumed, purchased them at an exhibition earlier that year. They later became part of the collection of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. As it happened, a former director of the Library, Angela Giral, was herself an evacuee from the Civil War. In a personal note, she cited Joseph Weissberger's description of the drawings as 'autobiographic pages of un-kept diaries'.

One can browse the collection in three ways: via the whole collection; the children's names; or the provinces where they resided as evacuees. This is helpful for family members trying to trace the work of relatives, but a thematic classification might have been more useful for teachers and researchers. The click of a mouse allows the browser to see a reasonably large version of each drawing, with the detail visible and the colors of the crayons used by the children vividly reproduced. There is also a caption giving the name and (where known) the age of the child, the colony to which they had been moved, and a brief description of the content in Spanish and English. Thus No. 22 explains: "This scene shows the day of the evacuation when, as we were about to climb into the train, we saw an airplane that was already firing and we had to go to a shelter nearby." Drawn by children between the ages of seven and fourteen, the pictures exhibited a considerable disparity between the untutored style of the majority, and the relatively sophisticated technique of a minority. No. 107, 'War Scene', for example, shows a woman grieving over her dead husband in a composition heavily indebted to The Angelus by Jean-François Millet.

There is a short section entitled "About the Collection," which contains little more information on the drawings beyond that summarized above. Hence we are given no help in understanding the context in which the drawings emerged, or the link between the drawings, the circumstances of the war, and the mindset of the children. Nevertheless, one might, for example, pose questions on the children's reactions to bombing, how they were evacuated, their new experiences in the colonies – and differences in the way boys and girls perceived the war. By way of comparison, scholars may find it useful to consult the more in-depth studies of children's drawings in wartime by the specialist in the Nazi occupation of Europe, Nicholas Stargardt. 1 At least the They Still Draw Pictures site gives the link to the web site for the San Diego collection. The latter reproduces the very up-beat introduction by Aldous Huxley. He notes the artistic talent of the younger children, free from what he sees as the dead hand of adult teaching. He also deplores the sad introduction the children received to one of the wonders of the modern age, the aeroplane, as bombs rained down on them from above.

In short, this is a potentially interesting collection that gives a child's perspective on the war, but from a teacher's point of view, there is very little help in ways of deploying it in the classroom.

Colin Heywood

The University of Nottingham

In short, this is a potentially interesting collection that gives a child's perspective on the war, but from a teacher's point of view, there is very little help in ways of deploying it in the classroom.

http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/categories/c1162/index_5.shtml

BBC

August 2009

Childhood and Evacuation forms part of a large-scale project, the WW2 People’s War, undertaken by the British Broadcasting Corporation between 2003 and 2006. It is billed as an archive of World War Two memories "written by the public, gathered by the BBC." Its core consists of 47,000 stories and 15,000 images provided by ordinary people from all parts of Britain. They are grouped into 64 categories that cover the home front as well as the military side.

To help with the daunting task of knowing where to start in such a vast array of material, there is a list of recommended stories in each category, chosen for reasons such as their vivid storytelling or their dramatic content. With its 14,336 stories, Childhood and Evacuation is by far the largest single category in the archive. Doubtless this is largely because most of those who were adults during the 1930s and 1940s would have died during the 60 or so years since the end of the war. None the less, it does also highlight the importance of the childhood dimension to any armed conflict.

The supporting documentation for the project is excellent. An Archive List helps readers find their way around the various categories, whilst a Timeline contains 144 fact files covering some of the key events in the war. These files are concise and accessible, though inevitably their authors find it difficult to explore in any detail the complex issues surrounding, say, the evacuation or the strategic bombing of enemy cities.

About this Site contains a mass of information on how the project was conceived, the house rules for moderating the stories (mainly to refuse copyright material), and the way the stories were gathered. At the outset, the project designers assumed that people old enough to have lived through the war would shy away from the new-fangled Internet, so the idea was that their children and grandchildren would research the family’s history and recount the stories. In the end, approximately 80 percent of the material came directly from people over 60 years of age, with some help from outreach volunteers and others to enter the accounts.

This section also includes a Learning Zone, featuring lesson plans on selected themes for teachers, families, and community groups. The latter includes one on Young People and War, pitched at both primary and secondary school pupils, with curriculum links to history, english, religious education, citizenship, and media studies.

The three lessons proposed for teachers focus on evacuation, bombing and rationing. These appear to be a reasonable reflection of the interests of the young. They draw on extracts from the stories and other resources specified for each lesson. The activities suggested for the class, and the supporting questions for the teacher to pose, make effective use of the website resources.

Firstly, they invite reflection on the nature of the source material, a useful exercise now that historians make extensive use of the childhood reminiscences of men and women at all levels of society. The organizers of the project note that they deliberately avoided any attempt to check the factual accuracy of the stories, as they attempted to convey "how the wartime generation remembered these years" rather than the received ideas of historians. The contributors themselves sometimes draw attention to the perils of a fading memory in old age: in the words of David Millar, "Flashes of incidents occur, but before they can be recorded they have disappeared."

Secondly, to demonstrate the positive contribution of the stories, the lessons use them to give a child’s perspective on well-known wartime events. They reveal, for example, the chaos and distress underlying the immense evacuation of 3 million people from the cities to safety in the countryside. Many of the city children settled in comfortably enough with their foster parents, while others struggled with the uprooting from their families. Exploring the site, one finds the case of Audrey J, who exasperated her host by constant bed-wetting:

One particular morning we awoke to find the bed drenched as usual, and Mrs Taylor was more angry than usual. It was a shear icicle day and she shoved me first into the back yard – naked, and threw a pail of freezing water over me, then proceeded to break the ice in the water butt to throw at me. It was like shards of glass hitting my body and of course drew blood.

Thirdly, the website gives an insight into the way children turned wartime conditions to their own advantage, as they explored bomb sites or swapped pieces of shrapnel.

Most of the contributions are long and full of detail on humdrum daily routines during the war, which may try the patience of young people today. Yet the website surely achieves its objective of providing a monumental learning resource for future generations.

Children of WW2 is another BBC website, covering similar ground, though this one is more specifically aimed at schools. It complements two TV programs, but claims to work also as a stand-alone resource – one suspects that it works more effectively in the former role. It does however have a section for Teachers and Parents, providing printable worksheets to support activities concerned with the rationing of food, a wartime home, and letters written by evacuees.

Interactive learning is encouraged in a Research Room where children can explore various types of source material under these three headings. The exercises on the computer are entertaining and informative, allowing the child to find out, for example, what would have happened if you tried to order a pizza in Britain in 1943, or to see how a ration book worked. There is also a series of pictures of a typical house of the period, with features of each room explained through a mouse click. The supporting documents are easy to access, though they emerge very much as little snippets of information. Doubtless it is a useful asset for schoolchildren in the second or third grade.

Colin Heywood

The University of Nottingham

The exercises on the computer are entertaining and informative, allowing the child to find out, for example, what would have happened if you tried to order a pizza in Britain in 1943, or to see how a ration book worked.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/nochildsplay/index.asp

Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum

August 2009

The exhibit No Child's Play at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem presents the photos, drawings, toys, dolls, and board games of children who were victims of the Holocaust. Of the ca. 6 million persons killed, one and a half million were children. The intent of the site is to provide viewers with insight into the lives of children during the Shoah by focusing on the personal stories and material culture of those few who survived. The children's stories are presented here with texts and images, written and edited by Yehudit Inbar, curator of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum.

This collection of narratives and artifacts reveals that children found comfort and companionship in the material culture of their childhood that also enabled them to create a reality different from that which surrounded them. Moreover, the array of child-centered documentary sources demonstrates how children provided their parents with encouragement, hope, in addition to money and food, that enabled them to continue their desperate daily fight for survival. The introduction is followed by a sequence of chronologically-organized links: the world of children before the war; in the shadow of the war; in the ghettos and the camps; in hiding, and in their new life. The viewer can easily click through the individual pages of each chapter—which contain between three to 15 images—while maintaining direct access to the chapter titles located in the left-hand navigation bar.

The texts that accompany the images offer useful explanations and clearly highlight their significance in a broader context. As the author emphasizes about the photographs in the "Before the War" section, all children lived their own individual lives, and none of the images present anything unusual or extraordinary. These images of ordinary children's lives underscore, however, the horror that was to come. During the war, many parents tried to save their children by sending them abroad. Youth Aliyah, for instance, successfully sent some 5,000 children to Palestine, while 9,000 left Germany after Kristallnacht for Great Britain. The rising tide of anti-Semitism, however, forced the return of refugees such as Liesel Joseph, a passenger on the ill-fated Saint Louis. The ocean liner depicted in Liesels colorful drawing that was prevented from disembarking Jewish passengers in Cuba returned to Europe.

The chapter, "Ghettos and Camps," includes illustrations of pre-ghetto life by Czech artist Bedrich Fritta created in celebration of his son's third birthday. Also included are several illustrations of the Theresienstadt ghetto drawn by an artistically talented teenage boy and dolls owned by two survivors whose stories also shed light on the enormous importance of toys to children living in ghettos and camps. There are even photos of a monopoly-like board game created in a graphics workshop engaged in underground activities that sought to provide children with useful information about how to survive the ghetto. (Unfortunately, much of the text printed on the game board and playing cards is frustratingly illegible in the site's magnified version.)

For the section "In Hiding" the curator/editor included a selection of photographs of children with classmates and toys, as well as the teddy bear that belonged to a boy while hidden in Holland by a Christian family. The recollections of survivors included throughout the site provide unique insight into the personal meanings of children's possessions in a historically-specific context. The final section, "Toward a New Life," consists of only three black and white photos of groups of children and one boy who did not want to let go of a toy gun once he had been liberated from Buchenwald.

However small the selection of sources, No Child's Play is sure to provide students with a deeper understanding of the impact of the Holocaust on children by giving voice to its victims. Teachers might find the need to include supplementary sources (both primary and secondary) due to the site's scant documentation of the horrors of the Holocaust. There is no guide to additional resources, however. And, in the absence of useful teaching strategies, instructors might find it helpful to discuss with their students the different methods of analysis needed to unpack the variety of documentary sources—photographs, artifacts, narratives, etc.—that were created by and for children of the Holocaust.

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona

The exhibit "No Child’s Play" at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem presents the photos, drawings, toys, dolls, and board games of children who were victims of the Holocaust.