This lively, provocative, and diverse collection of essays by eleven stellar children's authors explores the "road we've traveled" as Americans in the twentieth century. Each author has written on a subject he or she was eager to explore, resulting in a unique testimony not only to a century, but to the talents and interests of these outstanding writers who have changed the face of twentieth-century children's literature.
Russell Freedman launches the collection with a fascinating account of the predictions of two nineteenth-century science-fiction writers, H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, of what was in store for the coming century. A survey of the ups and downs of American politics and presidencies, from Theodore Roosevelt through Bill Clinton, is provided by Milton Meltzer, and Albert Marrin complements this study with a discussion of the long-term effects of World War I on America.
In a compelling essay on the conservation movement, Laurence Pringle explores the change in attitudes toward the environment as Americans began to regard it as something to protect rather than exploit. On a slightly different note, Bruce Brooks considers the shifting emphasis in sports, from the "human"-scale amateur athlete to the "superhuman" professional.
Jim Murphy discusses the dramatic evolution in transportation that came with the development of the automobile and the airplane. Walter Dean Myers's overview of the civil rights struggle is intriguing fare, as are Penny Colman's observations of the progress American women have made on various fronts, from suffrage to education.
Three writers have chosen a more personal approach to their topics. Lois Lowry chronicles the ins and outs of fashion through six generations of women in her family. Eve Bunting reveals the immigration experience in the context of her own Irish-American family. And in comparing her beliefs to those of her conservative Christian father, Katherine Paterson comments on the changing status of religion in America.
Illustrated with photographs and prints of the century's milestones, some from the authors' personal collections, this is an important retrospective on a century of great change and promise.
