What Was It Like Before the Telephone (Read All About It. Social Studies. Level B)

Grade 1-3?Two series entries that are overviews at best with minimal facts and cluttered pages. In Television, a white-haired woman of unspecified age shows a group of children what she did for fun when she was young. A mixture of drawings and old photographs illustrate such activities as making and playing with toys and games, making scrapbooks, sewing, going to movies and to live shows, playing musical instruments, listening to the radio, and reading. Telephone uses the guise of a science museum to show a simplified history of communications. Methods shown include mail being delivered on foot (by carriers in what appears to be Elizabethan costume), drums, smoke signals, semaphore towers and flags, carrier pigeons, quill pens, stage coach delivery, the Pony Express, Morse Code, telegraph, telephone, and fax machines. Neither title has many details and there's no context of time or place. A much better look at the "good old days" can be found in Toyomi Igus's fictional title When I Was Little (Just Us, 1992).?Eunice Weech, M.L. King Elementary School, Urbana, IL
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