Writing by Topic: Childhood & Youth
On the Vault
- “A 19th-Century Board Game Made to Teach Young Germans About Colonialism” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 22, 2016)
- “Adorable Midcentury Posters Teaching Kids How to Use The Library” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 29, 2016)
- “Some Delightfully Scatological and Cruel Nursery Rhymes, From the Oldest Surviving Book of Them” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 11, 2016)
- “Poignant Petitions From 19th-Century Mothers Hoping to Surrender Illegitimate Children” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 6, 2016)
- “Illustrated Propaganda for Elementary-School Students in Mussolini’s Italy” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 9, 2016)
- “A 19th-Century Relief Map That Let Students Explore the Roman Empire by Touch” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 10, 2016)
- “How an 1830s Children’s Magazine Taught Hard Truths About Slavery” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 27, 2016)
- “An Adorable Apple Pie ABC for Hungry 19th-Century Children” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 25, 2015)
- “These 18th- and 19th-Century ‘Dissected Maps’ Were the First Jigsaw Puzzles” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 4, 2015)
- “Modernist Posters That Taught 1930s Kids How To Take Good Care Of Books” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 7, 2015)
- “School Certificates of Merit for Good Little 19th-Century Boys and Girls” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, September 14, 2015)
- “A Delightful 1912 Children’s Book About a Wayward Rocket” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 31, 2015)
- “How Early-20th-Century Americans Taught Their Kids to be Thrifty” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 27, 2015)
- “How to Captivate an Audience Using Gestures, From a 19th-Century Oratorical Primer” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 25, 2015)
- “The Two-Page Plot Outline a Writer of the Hardy Boys Series Used to Crank Out a Book” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 13, 2015)
- “A List of Diseases and Afflictions Suffered By Young Factory Workers in Chicago, 1895” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 6, 2015)
- “Blind Kids’ Experiences at the Early-20th-Century Museum of Natural History, in Photos” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 22, 2014)
- “Map Shows Where the Juvenile Delinquents Lived in Depression-Era DC” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 3, 2014)
- “Go Ahead, Try to Decode This 19th-Century Rebus Atlas of New England” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, September 29, 2014)
- “‘The Sun Never Sets Upon the British Empire,’ Explained in GIF by an Old Children’s Toy” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, September 18, 2014)
- “School-Sanctioned Mid-18th-Century Hazing Rituals at Harvard” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, September 2, 2014)
- “American Boys at a Nazi Summer Camp, Upstate New York, Summer 1937” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, August 5, 2014)
- “A Post-World War I ‘Hunger Map of Europe,’ Aimed at the Hearts of American Kids” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 31, 2014)
- “Government Child Care Advice From Early Soviet Propaganda Posters” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 24, 2014)
- “The Puzzle-Writing, Puzzle-Solving Teen Subculture of the Late 19th Century” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 19, 2014)
- “Utterly Charming Photos of 1920s Chicago Kids Dressed Up as Flowers” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 7, 2014)
- “Fineable Offenses for Naughty 18th-Century Students at Harvard” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 25, 2014)
- “A 19th-Century Flowchart Helps You Ask Good Geographical Questions” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 17, 2014)
- “A Beautiful 1880s Geography Game for the ‘Rising Generation'” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 24, 2014)
- “A 19th-Century Mother’s Handwritten Record of Her Babies’ Childhood Illnesses” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 19, 2014)
- “Shirley Temple’s Earliest Movies Are Really Hard to Watch” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 11, 2014)
- “Map Shows How States Handled Child Labor Laws Before Federal Regulation” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 6, 2014)
- “When Students Went to School Outside–Even in Winter” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 19, 2013)
- “A Converted Skeptic’s Report on a Visit to 8-Year-Old Mozart” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 16, 2013)
- “A British Teacher’s Archive of Confiscated Toys” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 27, 2013)
- “In This Strange 1950 Newsreel Footage, Watch a Texas Mom Throw Knives At Her Daughters” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 12, 2013)
- “Test Your Kids’ Knowledge Against the Well-Informed Children of 1930” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 25, 2013)
- “A Few Awkwardly Outdated Jokes for WWI-Era Boy Scouts” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 11, 2013)
- “Pages from a 19th-Century Schoolgirl’s Gorgeous Hand-Drawn Atlas of the United States” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, August 30, 2013)
- “E.E. Cummings’ Colorful, Imaginative Childhood Drawings” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 17, 2013)
- “Foundling Tokens: For Surrendered Children, a Final Tie to Family” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 2, 2013)
- “Stitching the Solar System: Science as Needlepoint, 1811” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 20, 2013)
- “A Teenaged Charlotte Bronte’s Tiny Little Romance” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 13, 2013)
- “How the Boy Scouts Became the Heroes of the 1913 Parade for Women’s Suffrage” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 4, 2013)
- “The World’s First Baby Monitor: Zenith’s 1937 ‘Radio Nurse'” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 7, 2013)
- “Early Hackers’ Supersecret Spyware: Toy Whistles” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 1, 2013)
- “Celebrity Baby Feeding Frenzy, 1920s-Style” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 25, 2013)
- “‘F is for Fugitive’: A Fantastic 1864 Children’s Book About the Evil of Slavery” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 24, 2013)
- “Coping With a Raging Case of Beatlemania” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 14, 2013)
- “The Sad History of the Kid-Sized Handcuffs” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 11, 2013)
- “Edsel Ford’s Letter to Santa” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 25, 2012)
- “Christmas Games of Yesteryear” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 17, 2012)
- “A Patriotic Song of the Revolutionary War, Hidden in a Schoolboy’s Book” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 5, 2012)
- “When Kids (Literally) Played With Fire” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 28, 2012)
- “Pink Science, 50s-Style” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 13, 2012)
Everywhere Else
- “Avoiding The Scourge of a Million Crappy Plastic Toys” (Slate, January 16, 2018)
- “Your Child Care Conundrum Is An Anti-Communist Plot” (Slate, June 14, 2017)
- “The Creepy Bill O’Reilly Kids’ Book That Teaches Children to Beg for Help” (Slate‘s XX Factor, April 21, 2017)
- “How to Write Erudite History For Teenagers” (an interview with M.T. Anderson) (Slate, October 9, 2015)
- “Are ‘Free Range Kids’ Really a Good Idea? Insights from the Cleveland Play Census” (Belt Magazine, August 18, 2015)
- “Boyhood” (on a unique archive of childhood drawings) (Slate, May 28, 2015)
- “Against Generations” (Aeon Magazine, May 19, 2015)
- “Ode to Green Slime” (The Atlantic.com, February 6, 2015)
- “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Outtakes” (Virginia Quarterly Review online, December 5, 2014)
- “Early Work” (Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog, August 14, 2014)
- “Hive Minds” (Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog, July 29, 2014)
- “Honey, You’re Scaring the Kids” (The Appendix, July 25, 2014)
- “On Christmas, Browse a Historical Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys” (Open Culture, December 25, 2013)
- “Selling Creativity to America’s Kids” (Q&A with design historian Amy Ogata) (Boston Globe Ideas section, May 5, 2013)
- “In A Different Sea” (Songbirds and Satellites, November 9, 2011)
- “Young and Hot: Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries” (Songbirds and Satellites, September 6, 2011)
- “Deep in the Wonder Book of Knowledge” (Songbirds and Satellites, July 21, 2011)
- “Cream O’ The Crop” (Songbirds and Satellites, June 1, 2011)
- “Pasteur for Kids” (Songbirds and Satellites, April 4, 2011)
- “Nuclear Fears, Soothed by Poop, Turtles” (Songbirds and Satellites, March 25, 2011)
- “The Future Is Not Going To Be Like The Past: Mark Hertsgaard’s Hot: Living Through The Next Fifty Years On Earth” (Songbirds and Satellites, February 25, 2011)
- “Killing Dollies, in the Name of the State” (Songbirds and Satellites, February 10, 2011)
- “Shades of Science Fairs Past: Kids at the American Museum of Natural History” (Songbirds and Satellites, February 2, 2011)
- “Faraway Fronts, Close to Home” [PDF] (Paperweight, Spring/Summer 2011)
- “Drowning in Toys” (Songbirds and Satellites, December 17, 2010)
- “Science vs. Childhood on ‘Fringe'” (Songbirds and Satellites, November 29, 2010)
- “In the Dusty Toy-Bin of History at the Strong Museum” (Songbirds and Satellites, November 12, 2010)
- “Being a Kid After the Bomb” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 29, 2010)
- “Sweet Science Propaganda from They Might Be Giants” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 22, 2010)
- “Archival Gleanings from the Chemical Heritage Foundation” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 14, 2010)
- “Velcro’s Generation of Idiots” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 8, 2010)
- “Screening Winky-Dink: The First Interactive TV Show” [PDF] (Paperweight, Autumn/Winter 2010)