Books About the Industrial Revolution

By Melissa J. Oleen Rowan Public Library

                This month’s edition of the children’s magazine Appleseeds focuses on the Industrial Revolution.  The Industrial Revolution in America spanned the 1800s and on into the 1900s.  It was a time of heavy immigration, life altering inventions and history making changes in labor.  This might not seem a very kid friendly subject but Appleseeds proves otherwise.

                Appleseeds provides an excellent overview of the Industrial Revolution that young readers will be able to understand and find interesting.  Young children played an important role in the labor force.  Children worked long hours at hard jobs for little pay.  The wages they received were not for buying apps on their iPads.  It went back to their parents to help the family finances.  Kid length articles (not too long, not too short), comic book style illustrations, sharp period photographs and modern comparisons are packed into this magazine which serves as a great jumping off point for exploring other subjects.  Articles include “Who Did What?”, “Wage and Hours”, “A Mill Girls Story” and “A Day in the Coal Mines”.   Appleseeds is available in the Children’s Department at Headquarters.

                The Children’s Room has additional materials on the rise of industry in the United States.  Two new non-fiction sources are The Rise of Industry: 1870-1900 and World War I and Modern America: 1890-1930.  These titles take this broad topic and break it down into sections that include the rise of big businesses (think Rockefeller and Carnegie), the Transcontinental Railroad, the formation on unions and passing of labor laws.  Both books are from the Core Library, a series of nonfiction books that support the Common Core State Standards for grades 3-6.  The books include glossaries, time lines, charts, diagrams and maps plus a section called “Straight to the Source” which introduces readers to information that comes from primary sources with accompanying questions.

                Good fiction titles pertaining to the topic of industrial revolution include Hear My Sorrow: The Diary of Angela Denoto, A Shirtwaist Worker.  Angela, an Italian immigrant, leaves school at age 14 to work in a shirtwaist factory at her father’s demand.  Her diary covers the two years she worked in the factory providing insight on what it was like for immigrant families, factory conditions and tenement living.  Author Deborah Hopkinson based the story around a real fire that occurred in 1911 at the Triangle Waist Company.  One of the worst workplace fires in New York City history, over 140 factory workers were killed, including many in their early teen and many by jumping from nine stories up.  The fire resulted in New York City passing a number of fire, safety and building codes.

                Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, has written two books set during the industrial revolution.  Lyddie, an American Library Association notable book, is set in the 1840s.  Lyddie is hired out at ten years old by her family to work in a factory to help pay off their farm debts.  The book follows Lyddie as she finds work in a cloth factory where the conditions are wretched.  After learning the family farm has been sold, she determines to make a better life for herself and attend college.   Bread and Roses, Too follows Rosa, a young girl whose father has passed away and mother supports the local union.   Rosa is sent to Vermont when the strike against the local mill becomes dangerous.  The book is based on a real life event in 1911 when mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts went on an 8 week strike and tensions escalated to the point that militia became involved and striking worker’s children were sent to other cities.

                And I would be remiss if I did not include Sinclair Lewis’s The Jungle for high school teens and adult readers.    The main character, Jurgis Rudkus comes to Chicago form Lithuania filled with optimism that slowly deflates into hopelessness as one set-back after another in the form of corrupt bosses, horrid working conditions, unpleasant living conditions and lack of medical services ruin his chances of finding his vision of the American dream.  Sinclair provides a griping look at the life of immigrant industrial workers and exposes the unbelievable conditions of the U.S. meat-packing industry at the time.  The library has the uncensored original edition of The Jungle.  Through NC Digital, you can check out the audio and eBook editions.

Online Resources for Children at Rowan Public Library

Dara L. Cain Rowan Public Library


Rowan Public Library has a variety of fun and educational resources online for children to explore. Visit the library’s website with your child by going to www.rowanpubliclibrary.org and selecting the Kids Space link found on the home page where you will find great reading resources and more!  If your child has a homework assignment to complete don’t fret, visit the Online Tools link which will lead you to a variety of databases full of information.

The Kids Space link has excellent reading resources for preschoolers up to eighth grade to discover.   ABC Mouse for Kids is a website designed to help children learn to read through phonics, and teaches lessons in math, social studies, art, music and more.  Another great website is Starfall which teaches your child to learn phonics in a fun and interactive way.  Every word when tapped or clicked will read aloud enabling your child’s speaking, reading, and writing vocabulary.  For free animated talking books visit Tumble Books Library.  This is a great program to help teach kids the joy of reading in a different format and includes storybooks, videos, puzzles and games, language learning (books in Spanish), chapter books, and non-fiction books. 

You will also want to check out the Book Adventure site.  This site provides a free, motivational reading program. Children can search for books, read them offline, come back to quiz on what they’ve read, and earn prizes for their reading achievements.  For some more fun visit the ABCya.com link which offers free educational kids computer games and activities for elementary students.  All children’s educational computer games were created or approved by certified school teachers.

For children who have a thirst for knowledge and/or are working on school assignments you can find invaluable information by selecting the Online Tools link.  To access Online Tools all you will need is your free library card and a four digit pin number which we can help set up for you the next time you visit the library.  If you would like to check out these resources but do not want to wait, you can register online for a Digital Library Card which will allow you to access the information immediately. Just remember that you will still need to visit the library with a physical card to check out books at the library.

NC Live database provides North Carolina residents and students with access to high quality information.  This is the place where you can search magazine collections, newspapers, journal articles, electronic books, historical materials, maps, and much more.  The resources available cover a wide range of topics and will benefit students completing homework assignments. 

If your child is interested in learning a language or wants to practice what they are learning in school, we have two great resources.  Rocket Languages is an award winning interactive online language learning system where children as well as adults can learn conversational language skills at their own pace.  Languages offered include Spanish, Arabic, French, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Ingles (English for Spanish speakers) and American Sign Language.  Once you have created an account, the next time you log in as a returning user Rocket Languages will remember where you left off so you can continue your lessons.

Pronunciator is another great language resource that provides interactive, self-paced language learning for 80 languages and ESL for 50 non-English languages.  It includes audio lessons, interactive textbooks, quizzes, intelligent flashcards, phrasebooks and pronunciation analysis for children and adults.  Users create their own login to access the resource and track their progress.
Check out rowanpubliclibrary.org to explore these exciting online resources and more with your children!

List Making in January

by Pam Everhardt Bloom Rowan Public Library

January is often a month of list making.  Add Lisette’s List, the latest novel by Susan Vreeland somewhere near the top if you’re looking for a good read with an interesting art twist. The plot seems simple, yet provides plenty of interest and intrigue. A young Parisian wife ends up in Provence to her citified dismay, with the task of taking care of her husband’s aging grandfather. The art connection arrives with the surprising stories of the grandfather’s relationship with artists such as Cezanne, Pissarro, Picasso and others. Add missing paintings, the Vichy regime and the landscape of Provence and you should definitely be entertained. An unexpected surprise was finding that I continued to think about art and our relationship with paintings long after the story ended. This also made me remember how much I like Vreeland’s other books.

You may recognize the author’s name from previous novels. A 1999 bestseller, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, pivots around a possible Vermeer painting. It’s almost as if the art becomes one of the main characters in a story that explores the power of this painting on the lives of eight individuals from present day to 17^th century. Although the painting in this particular novel is fictitious, I found the weaving of historical connections with the power of art in our lives absorbing.

  Luncheon of the Boating Party is one of my favorites. Narrated by Renoir, I was captivated by Vreeland’s story of how Renoir composed this masterpiece painting. The realistic descriptions of paint application, composition problems and details about the part his models and friends played in the making of this famous painting made me wonder how much was historically accurate and why Vreeland started writing about art.  Her author’s note provided some detail; however, I wanted additional information to better separate fact from fiction.

My turnkey approach to finding those facts is one free and easily accessible to patrons of Rowan Public Library. If you have not accessed NC LIVE with your library card and pin number, make this unique resource another important addition to your January “to do” list for the year. I found immediate access to over 3,000 possible articles about Susan Vreeland and her books and articles such as, Huckleberry Moments; an Interview with Susan Vreeland by Mary Menzel for Book Talk, Nov.1, 2007, gave insight into her writing process as well as confirming the validity of her research. Another interesting tidbit, Vreeland only started enjoying art books when she was too weak to read while recovering from a bone-marrow transplant. She spent months immersed with art and this experience eventually led to a writing career in historical fiction based on artists and their creations.

I thoroughly enjoyed Vreeland’s Life studies, a collection of stories about art, real artists with everyday problems and ordinary people who love and experience art. I really did like each and every story and although not every story was about a known artist, it was fun to attempt to place each story with its historical art connection.

Three other Vreeland books revolve around famous artists more obscure than Vermeer and the Impressionists. The Passion of Artemisia, is a novel about one of the great artists of the Italian baroque, perhaps surprisingly, a woman. Vreeland uses documented trial records and associations with the likes of Galileo and Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger to weave a compelling story about the artist Artemisia Gentileschi.  Another strong female character is based on Emily Carr, an early 20^th Century Canadian painter and naturalist who depicted British Columbia native culture and art in her own unique style. After reading The Forest Lover, don’t miss visiting Vreeland’s webpage, http://www.svreeland.com/, to view the paintings that inspired passages in the book. Last but certainly not least, learn more about Clara Driscoll, little known designer of Tiffany lamps in Clara and Mr. Tiffany. This book explores a turbulent time for women in the work force and the unseen designers behind famous names.

Find all these books and resources at your local Rowan Public Library. Add a Vreeland book to your list for 2015 and prepare for an interesting and thought-provoking read.

RDA Cataloging

RDA or Resource Description and Access is a new cataloging standard that will upgrade the Online Catalog at Rowan Public Library after the New Year.

The purpose of this standard is to provide a set of guidelines and instructions to support resource discovery.  It is designed to focus attention on the catalog user and the tasks they carry out when they are searching the library online catalog.

There have been many changes in cataloging over the past fifty years and not just because of the growth of new types of publications and new types of content, but also because we live in an online networked world that has changed the way the library and its users go about their work.

RDA was designed by the library community for its use, but one of the stated goals was that RDA should also “be capable of adaptation to meet the specific needs of other communities.”  One of the requirements was a framework that would be flexible enough to allow description of all types of resources, whether traditional library resources, or resources from other cultural communities, such as digital archives or museums.

 The possibility of using RDA in a broader range of contexts is also evident in its definition as a “content” standard, and its adaptability for use in an international context.

RDA is the product of international cooperation between four countries: Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. However, “use in an international context” means the potential to be used by many countries around the world, not just by the four that developed the standard.

RDA is a key component for the improvement of resource discovery because it guides the recording of data. It is designed to produce data that can be stored, searched, and retrieved in traditional catalogs and it is also designed for use on the Web with new database technologies. It positions the library to take advantage of the networked online world, and to make library data widely visible, discoverable, and usable.