The New York Public Library Announces the Top 10 Checked-Out Books of All Time

in Books, K-12, Libraries | January 14th, 2020

Pub­lic libraries are unsung heroes of their com­mu­ni­ties. Many a busy work­ing adult can take their impor­tance for grant­ed. But par­ents of young chil­dren know—the library is a qui­et haven, place of won­der and dis­cov­ery, and free resource for all sorts of edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ences. Giv­en the impor­tance of libraries in kids’ lives, it’s no won­der that six of the top ten most-checked-out books—accord­ing to the New York Pub­lic Library—are children’s books.

The NYPL cal­cu­lat­ed the most checked out books in its his­to­ry in hon­or of its 125th anniver­sary. Giv­en that it hous­es the sec­ond largest col­lec­tion in the U.S., after the Library of Con­gress, and serves mil­lions in the most lin­guis­ti­cal­ly diverse city in the coun­try, its cir­cu­la­tion num­bers give us a rea­son­able sam­pling of near-uni­ver­sal tastes.

These include time­less clas­sics of children’s lit­er­a­ture: Ezra Jack Keats’ Calde­cott-win­ning The Snowy Day tops the list, “in print and in the Library’s cat­a­log con­tin­u­ous­ly since 1962”; The Cat in the Hat comes in at a close sec­ond. Where the Wild Things Are and The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar round out the list of books for the very young.

Where is the stal­wart Good­night Moon, you may ask? Here we have a juicy bit of lore:

By all mea­sures, this book should be a top check­out (in fact, it might be the top check­out) if not for an odd piece of his­to­ry: extreme­ly influ­en­tial New York Pub­lic Library children’s librar­i­an Anne Car­roll Moore hat­ed Good­night Moon when it first came out. As a result, the Library didn’t car­ry it until 1972. That lost time bumped the book off the top 10 list for now. But give it time.

For now, Mar­garet Wise Brown’s 1947 clas­sic receives hon­or­able men­tion. Clas­sic kids’ books cir­cu­late a lot because they’re wide­ly read, but also because they’re short, which leads to more turnover, the Library points out. Length of time in print is also a fac­tor, which makes the pres­ence of Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, pub­lished in 1998, par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive.

  1. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats: 485,583 check­outs
  2. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss: 469,650 check­outs
  3. 1984 by George Orwell: 441,770 check­outs
  4. Where the Wild Things Are by Mau­rice Sendak: 436,016 check­outs
  5. To Kill a Mock­ing­bird by Harp­er Lee: 422,912 check­outs
  6. Char­lot­te’s Web by E.B. White: 337,948 check­outs
  7. Fahren­heit 451 by Ray Brad­bury: 316,404 check­outs
  8. How to Win Friends and Influ­ence Peo­ple by Dale Carnegie: 284,524 check­outs
  9. Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sor­cer­er’s Stone by J.K. Rowl­ing: 231,022 check­outs
  10. The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar by Eric Car­le: 189,550 check­outs

Like J.K. Rowling’s mod­ern clas­sic, all of the remain­ing books on the list are novels—save out­lier How to Win Friends and Influ­ence Peo­ple by Dale Carnegie—and all are nov­els read exten­sive­ly by mid­dle and high school stu­dents, a fur­ther sign of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­lic libraries.

Some stu­dents may only be required to read a small hand­ful of nov­els in their school career, and whether they fol­low through, and maybe go on to read more and more books, and maybe write a few books of their own, may depend upon those nov­els con­stant­ly cir­cu­lat­ing for every­one through insti­tu­tions like the New York Pub­lic Library.

See the full list above and learn more about the project at NPR and the NYPL.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets Patrons Check Out Ties, Brief­cas­es & Hand­bags for Job Inter­views

The New York Pub­lic Library Puts Clas­sic Sto­ries on Insta­gram: Start with Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land and Read Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis Soon

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Book­store Lists Fea­ture Works by Muraka­mi, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, Von­negut, Ker­ouac & Palah­niuk

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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The First & Last Time Mister Rogers Sang “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (1968–2001)

in K-12, Life, Television | January 13th, 2020

Mr. Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, the icon­ic tele­vi­sion series that ran from 1968 to 2001, is a major child­hood touch­stone for so many.

Raise your hand if you have a Pavlov­ian response to the famil­iar open­ing seg­ment, in which Fred Rogers opens the front door to his hum­ble liv­ing room set, heads to the clos­et, singing, to exchange his jack­et for a com­fy cardi­gan sweater, and then sits on a wood­en deacon’s bench to swap out his street shoes for a pair of can­vas sneak­ers.

As per the show’s web­site, this rou­tine was a promise of sorts to view­ers:

I care about you, no mat­ter who you are and no mat­ter what you can or can­not do… Let’s spend this time togeth­er. We’ll build a rela­tion­ship and talk and imag­ine and sing about things that mat­ter to you.

Fans of all ages—some too young to have caught the show in its orig­i­nal run—have post­ed over 28,000 grate­ful, emo­tion­al com­ments on the video, above, which teams the open­ing seg­ment of the first episode, Feb­ru­ary 19, 1968, with that of the last episode, August 31, 2001.

The biggest change seems to be the move from black-and-white to col­or.

Oth­er­wise, the tweaks are decid­ed­ly minor.

The wood­en doors are replaced with sim­i­lar mod­els sport­ing cast iron hinges.

The win­dow seat gets some pil­lows.

The shut­ters give way to cafe cur­tains, open to reveal a bit of stu­dio foliage.

A fish tank is installed near the traf­fic light that sig­naled the start of every episode.

The clos­et fills with bright sweaters, many hand knit by Mr. Rogers’ mom—at some point, these tran­si­tioned from but­tons to zip­pers, which were eas­i­er to manip­u­late and were qui­eter near his body mic.

(Once, Mr. Rogers but­toned his sweater wrong, but opt­ed not to reshoot. Cast mem­ber David “Mr. McFeely” Newell recalled that his friend saw the on-cam­era boo boo as an oppor­tu­ni­ty “to show chil­dren that peo­ple make mis­takes.”)

There are the framed trol­ley prints and Pic­ture Pic­ture, as con­stant and unfash­ion­able as the braid­ed rug and Bicen­ten­ni­al rock­ing chairs that were a fea­ture of my grand­par­ents’ house.

It’s such a good feel­ing, a very good feel­ing, to see how loy­al Rogers and his pro­duc­ers were to these famil­iar ele­ments through­out the decades.

Brace your­self, friends.

Mr. Rogers was kind of over these open­ers.

As his wife, Joanne Rogers, told The New York Times in 2001, a few months before the final episode aired:

He does­n’t miss the show. I think he miss­es the Neigh­bor­hood of Make-Believe because he enjoyed work­ing with peo­ple around him. He real­ly loves all of them, and he’ll keep in touch. But he did not enjoy what he called ‘inte­ri­ors,’ the begin­ning and end­ings of the pro­grams. He had got­ten where he had real­ly dread­ed it so.

It wasn’t so much the repet­i­tive nature of the greet­ing as the need to put on make­up and con­tact lens­es, a telegenic con­sid­er­a­tion that didn’t fac­tor in to the old black-and-white days. Mr Rogers said that he would have pre­ferred pre­sent­ing him­self to the camera—and to the neigh­bors watch­ing at home—exactly as he did to his friends and neigh­bors in real life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speak­ing to Chil­dren (1977)

When Fred Rogers and Fran­cois Clem­mons Broke Down Race Bar­ri­ers on a His­toric Episode of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood (1969)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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“Mr. Tambourine Man” & Other Bob Dylan Classics, Sung Beautifully by Kids

in K-12, Music | January 10th, 2020

New Zealan­der David Antony Clark grew up with the music of Bob Dylan, and, like many his age, felt sad that the youngun’s had no idea who that was. Instead of moan­ing, he decid­ed to pro­duce Kids Sing Bob Dylan, an 11-track CD of cov­ers sung by the Star­bugs, Clark’s children’s group.

Before you flinch, check the YouTube clip above. These kids can actu­al­ly sing, right? The har­monies are there…I mean pos­si­bly cleaned up a bit with tech­nol­o­gy, I can’t say for sure.

Here’s “For­ev­er Young,” from Dylan’s 1974 Plan­et Waves. An appro­pri­ate song for this quin­tet: Jessie Hil­lel, Rebec­ca Jenk­ins, Sarah Whitak­er, Ben Ander­son, and Roisin Ander­son, all from Welling­ton, NZ, and rag­ing in age from 7 to 15.

Accord­ing to a Stuff.nz arti­cle on the release, Jessie Hil­lel said about the record­ing: “Hear­ing and lis­ten­ing to him was real­ly fun. But you can do what­ev­er you want to the songs, but at the same time I real­ly want­ed to have his stan­dard because he did such a good job. I feel proud of myself, it’s just so good.”

Ben Ander­son, age 12, was the only one with pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of Dylan: ““I’d heard about him a few times before, I was real­ly excit­ed. He’s a real­ly good singer, just the emo­tion that he puts into his songs, I was real­ly excit­ed to sing them. I was real­ly ner­vous that I would­n’t live up to it, and do it right, but it got eas­i­er as the song went on.”

Now, you might have noticed two things from a quick lis­ten. One of the younger kids, Jessie Hil­lel, might be small, but she packs a voice from some­one twice her age. (She han­dles the low­er range in the har­monies.) The oth­er thing: these videos are from 2011.

Where is Jessie now? Fun­ny you ask:

In 2012 she made her way onto the finals of New Zealand’s Got Tal­ent, and in 2016 she sang Puc­ci­ni in Mel­bourne. She’s cur­rent­ly study­ing music in Mel­bourne and is in a jazz-fusion band called Jakal.

Sarah Whitak­er also has her own music chan­nel on YouTube.

Fun­ny about kids–they grow up right in front of your eyes.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Tan­gled Up in Blue: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The Magic of Chess: Kids Share Their Uninhibited, Philosophical Insights about the Benefits of Chess

in Games, K-12 | January 9th, 2020

From the US Chess Fed­er­a­tion and direc­tor Jen­ny Schweitzer comes the short doc­u­men­tary, The Mag­ic of Chess. “Filmed at the 2019 Ele­men­tary Chess Cham­pi­onships at the Nashville Opry­land resort, a group of chil­dren share their unin­hib­it­ed, philo­soph­i­cal insights about the ben­e­fits of chess.” Jen­ny Schweitzer added: “For me, as a moth­er of a child who sim­ply loves the game, it was my inten­tion to focus not on the com­pet­i­tive aspects of the chess world, but rather what a deep com­mit­ment to chess can poten­tial­ly offer some­one, young or old.” If this whets your appetite, explore some of our chess resources below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

A Brief His­to­ry of Chess: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the 1,500-Year-Old Game

Gar­ry Kas­parov Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Chess

A Beau­ti­ful Short Doc­u­men­tary Takes You Inside New York City’s Last Great Chess Store

Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Mind-Bend­ing Chess Prob­lems

Chess Grand­mas­ter Gar­ry Kas­parov Relives His Four Most Mem­o­rable Games

When John Cage & Mar­cel Duchamp Played Chess on a Chess­board That Turned Chess Moves Into Elec­tron­ic Music (1968)

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

A Human Chess Match Gets Played in Leningrad, 1924

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Itzhak Perlman Appears on Sesame Street and Poignantly Shows Kids How to Play the Violin and Push Through Life’s Limits (1981)

in Education, Health, K-12, Life, Music, Television | December 30th, 2019

I always cham­pi­on any­thing that will improve the lives of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and put it on the front burn­er. — Itzhak Perl­man

At its best, the Inter­net expands our hori­zons, intro­duc­ing us to new inter­ests and per­spec­tives, forg­ing con­nec­tions and cre­at­ing empa­thy.

The edu­ca­tion­al chil­dren’s series Sesame Street was doing all that decades ear­li­er.

Wit­ness this brief clip from 1981, star­ring vio­lin vir­tu­oso Itzhak Perl­man and a six-year-old stu­dent from the Man­hat­tan School of Music.

For many child—and per­haps adult—viewers, this excerpt pre­sent­ed their first sig­nif­i­cant encounter with clas­si­cal musi­cal and/or dis­abil­i­ty.

The lit­tle girl scam­pers up the steps to the stage as Perl­man, who relies on crutch­es and a motor­ized scoot­er to get around, fol­lows behind, heav­ing a sigh of relief as he low­ers him­self into his seat.

Already the point has been made that what is easy to the point of uncon­scious­ness for some presents a chal­lenge for oth­ers.

Then each takes a turn on their vio­lin.

Perlman’s skills are, of course, unpar­al­leled, and the young girl’s seem pret­ty excep­tion­al, too, par­tic­u­lar­ly to those of us who nev­er man­aged to get the hang of an instru­ment. (She began lessons at 3, and told the Suzu­ki Asso­ci­a­tion of the Amer­i­c­as that her Sesame Street appear­ance with Perl­man was the “high­light of [her] pro­fes­sion­al career.”)

In the near­ly 40 years since this episode first aired, pub­lic aware­ness of dis­abil­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty has become more nuanced, a devel­op­ment Perl­man dis­cussed in a 2014 inter­view with the Wall Street Jour­nal, below.

Hav­ing resent­ed the way ear­ly fea­tures about him invari­ably show­cased his dis­abil­i­ty, he found that he missed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to advo­cate for oth­ers when men­tions dropped off.

Trans­paren­cy cou­pled with celebri­ty pro­vides him with a mighty plat­form. Here he is speak­ing in the East Room of the White House in 2015, on the day that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma hon­ored him with the Medal of Free­dom:

And his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Sesame Street have con­tin­ued through­out the decades, includ­ing per­for­mances of “You Can Clean Almost Any­thing” (to the tune of Bach’s Par­ti­ta for Solo Vio­lin), “Put Down the Duck­ie,” Pagli­ac­ci’s Vesti la giub­ba (back­ing up Placido Flamin­go), and Beethoven’s Min­uet in G, below.

Read more of Perlman’s thoughts on dis­abil­i­ty, and enroll in his Mas­ter Class here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Vio­lin­ists Play­ing as Kids: Itzhak Perl­man, Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, & More

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates Cape-Cod­di­ties by Roger Liv­ingston Scaife (1920). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Download Beautiful Free Posters Celebrating the Achievements of Living Female STEM Leaders

in Education, Gender, K-12, Physics, Podcasts, Science, Technology | December 27th, 2019

Remem­ber the posters that dec­o­rat­ed your child­hood or teenaged bed­room?

Of course you do.

Whether aspi­ra­tional or inspi­ra­tional, these images are amaz­ing­ly potent.

I’m a bit embar­rassed to admit what hung over my bed, espe­cial­ly in light of a cer­tain CGI adap­ta­tion…

No such wor­ries with a set of eight free down­load­able posters hon­or­ing eight female trail­blaz­ers in the fields of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math.

These should prove ever­green.


Com­mis­sioned by Nev­er­the­less, a pod­cast that cel­e­brates women whose advance­ments in STEM fields have shaped—and con­tin­ue to shape—education and learn­ing, each poster is accom­pa­nied with a brief bio­graph­i­cal sketch of the sub­ject.

Nev­er­the­less has tak­en care that the fea­tured achiev­ers are drawn from a wide cul­tur­al and racial pool.

No shame if you’re unfa­mil­iar with some of these extra­or­di­nary women. Their names may not pos­sess the same degree of house­hold recog­ni­tion as Marie Curie, but they will once they’re hang­ing over your daughter’s (or son’s) bed.

It’s worth not­ing that with the excep­tion of the under­sung moth­er of DNA Helix Ros­alind Franklin, these are liv­ing role mod­els. They are:

Astro­naut Dr. Mae Jemi­son

Robot­ics pio­neer Dr. Cyn­thia Breazeal

Math­e­mati­cian Gladys West

Tech inno­va­tor Juliana Rotich

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal chemist Tu Youy­ou

Bio­phar­ma­cist and women rights advo­cate Maria da Pen­ha

Biotech­nol­o­gist Dr. Hay­at Sin­di

Kudos, too, to Nev­er­the­less for includ­ing biogra­phies of the eight female illus­tra­tors charged with bring­ing the STEM lumi­nar­ies to aes­thet­i­cal­ly cohe­sive graph­ic life: Lidia Toma­shevskaya,Thandi­we Tsha­bal­ala, Cami­la Rosa, Xu Hui, Kari­na Perez, Joana Neves, Gene­va B, and Juli­ette Bro­cal

Lis­ten to Nev­er­the­less’ episode on STEM Role Mod­els here.

Down­load Nev­er­the­less’ free posters in Eng­lish here. You can also down­load zipped fold­ers con­tain­ing all eight posters trans­lat­ed into Brazil­ian Por­tuguese, French, French Cana­di­an, Ger­man, Ital­ian, Span­ish, and Sim­pli­fied Chi­nese.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pop Art Posters Cel­e­brate Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists: Down­load Free Posters of Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace & More

Women Sci­en­tists Launch a Data­base Fea­tur­ing the Work of 9,000 Women Work­ing in the Sci­ences

“The Matil­da Effect”: How Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists Have Been Denied Recog­ni­tion and Writ­ten Out of Sci­ence His­to­ry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates Cape-Cod­di­ties (1920) by Roger Liv­ingston Scaife. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Interactive Periodic Table of Elements Shows How the Elements Get Used in Making Everyday Things

in Chemistry, K-12 | December 4th, 2019

“The dis­cov­ery of the peri­od­ic sys­tem for clas­si­fy­ing the ele­ments rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of a num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ments, rather than a sud­den brain­storm on the part of one indi­vid­ual,” writes Eric Scer­ri at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. And yet, while sev­er­al sci­en­tists over the course of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry invent­ed sys­tems for clas­si­fy­ing the ele­ments, “ask most chemists who dis­cov­ered the peri­od­ic table and you will almost cer­tain­ly get the answer Dmitri Mendeleev,” notes the Roy­al Soci­ety of Chem­istry.  That’s for good rea­son, since the basis of the table we know today came from the design Mendeleev cre­at­ed in 1869.

This past March saw the 150th anniver­sary of his achieve­ment, which has hard­ly remained a his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. Every gen­er­a­tion has its table. Mendeleev’s rudi­men­ta­ry begin­nings have tak­en on new shape and have been sup­ple­ment­ed with anno­ta­tions and illus­tra­tions in eye-catch­ing col­or in text­books and on class­room walls around the world. It’s only fit­ting, then, that the 21st cen­tu­ry has its dig­i­tal ver­sions of the table, like the inter­ac­tive design by Boe­ing soft­ware engi­neer Kei­th Enevold­sen.

The Inter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of the Ele­ments, in Pic­tures and Words, adapts itself to dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles while pro­vid­ing stu­dents of chem­istry, of all ages and lev­els, instant facts about each of the ele­ments it illus­trates. Click on Pal­la­di­um, for exam­ple, and you’ll learn about its role in pol­lu­tion con­trol. The non-cor­rod­ing hard met­al absorbs hydro­gen and is used in lab­ware, elec­tric con­tacts, and den­tistry. Rhe­ni­um, we learn, is a dense met­al used in rock­et engines, heater coils, and elec­tric con­tacts, among oth­er things.

Oth­er “seem­ing­ly obscure” ele­ments we may nev­er have heard of, like Gal­li­um and Tan­ta­lum, influ­ence our dai­ly lives “quite a bit, it turns out,” as Lacy Cooke writes at Inhab­it, serv­ing as com­po­nents in LEDs and mobile phones. We gath­er such facts at a glance, as well as the oth­er end­less­ly use­ful func­tions of the table. Enevold­sen fur­ther adapts his designs for home or class­room use with print­able PDFs, includ­ing a ver­sion with only words and a sim­pli­fied table with only pic­tures. Begin­ning stu­dents may be thrilled to find print-your-own ele­ments cards, as well as oth­er peri­od­ic-table-relat­ed visu­al aids like Atom­ic Orbitals, a col­or-cod­ed chart that “shows what atoms look like.”

The group­ings on the peri­od­ic chart so famil­iar to us today came about when Mendeleev “real­ized that, by putting [the ele­ments] in order of increas­ing atom­ic weight, cer­tain types of ele­ment reg­u­lar­ly occurred,” the Roy­al Soci­ety points out. But his “real genius… was to leave gaps for undis­cov­ered ele­ments. He even pre­dict­ed the prop­er­ties of five of these ele­ments and their com­pounds.” Enevoldsen’s inter­ac­tive table makes for an easy for­mat to update. When new ele­ments are named, he adds them to his charts imme­di­ate­ly.

Peri­od­ic tables like Enevoldsen’s may only bare­ly resem­ble Mendeleev’s spare orig­i­nal, but the Russ­ian chemist’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem still pro­vides the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples by which we under­stand the fun­da­men­tal ele­ments that make up the mate­r­i­al world. View and down­load PDF copies of all of these high­ly infor­ma­tive, and up-to-date peri­od­ic tables here. Or pur­chase posters/prints here.

via Inhab­it

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Chem­istry: New Ani­ma­tion Sum­ma­rizes the Entire Field of Chem­istry in 12 Min­utes

A Peri­od­ic Table Visu­al­iz­ing the Year & Coun­try in Which Each Ele­ment Was Dis­cov­ered

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Pre­sent­ed as Inter­ac­tive Haikus

The Peri­od­ic Table of Endan­gered Ele­ments: Visu­al­iz­ing the Chem­i­cal Ele­ments That Could Van­ish Before You Know It

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Novel Adaptation

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, History, K-12, Literature | November 1st, 2019

The human imag­i­na­tion can be an extra­or­di­nary cop­ing device in times of trou­ble, a tiny win­dow pro­vid­ing men­tal escape from what­ev­er cell fate has con­signed us to.

Diarist and aspir­ing pro­fes­sion­al writer Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen con­cen­tra­tion camp at the age of 15, chafed at her now-uni­ver­sal­ly-known con­fine­ment in the Secret Annex. She chafed at her mother’s author­i­ty and the seem­ing­ly effort­less saint­li­ness of her old­er sis­ter. Doc­u­ment­ing her dai­ly phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al real­i­ty offered tem­po­rary respite from it.

The lib­er­at­ing pow­er of the cre­ative mind is one of the aspects writer Ari Fol­man and illus­tra­tor David Polon­sky sought to tease out when adapt­ing Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl as a graph­ic nov­el.

The graph­ic nov­el for­mat decreed that entire pas­sages would be cut or con­densed. Polon­sky can use a sin­gle pan­el to show logis­tics it took Anne para­graphs to describe. The inter­per­son­al con­flicts she dwelt on are now con­veyed by facial expres­sions and body lan­guage.

As with Sid Jacob­son and Ernie Colón’s 2010 Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Autho­rized Graph­ic Biog­ra­phy, the diary’s small stage is expand­ed to give read­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those unac­quaint­ed with the orig­i­nal text, a his­tor­i­cal con­text for under­stand­ing the wider social impli­ca­tions of Anne’s tragedy.

But this graph­ic retelling is unique in that it traf­fics in mag­ic real­ist visu­als that should play well with 21st-cen­tu­ry youth, who cut their teeth on CGI, fast-paced edits, and stream­ing teen-focused enter­tain­ments where­in char­ac­ters are apt to break the fourth wall or break into song.

These are the read­ers to whom the project is most inten­tion­al­ly pitched. As Fol­man told Teen Vogue’s Emma Sar­ran Web­ster:

I tru­ly believe that in a few years, when the very last sur­vivors will have died, the angle that will be tak­en from the sto­ry will be that with every year, we are 10 years fur­ther away from the orig­i­nal. […] There is a severe threat that the things we have to learn from it will not be taught and learned if we don’t find a new lan­guage for them. So any new lan­guage in my opin­ion is blessed, as long as it stays with­in the frame­work and reach­es young audi­ences by means of their tools, which are now very visu­al.

Ergo, Kit­ty, Anne’s nick­name for her diary, has been per­son­i­fied, emerg­ing from the lit­tle plaid book’s pages like Peter Pan’s shad­ow, ear atten­tive­ly cocked toward the secrets Anne whis­pers into it.

The melo­dra­mat­ic Mrs. van Daan’s prized fur coat has an anthro­po­mor­phized rab­bit head col­lar, capa­ble of join­ing in the dia­logue.

Polon­sky pays homage to artists Edvard Munch, whose “degen­er­a­tive” work Hitler had removed from Ger­man muse­ums, and Gus­tav Klimt, who paint­ed many works that were con­fis­cat­ed from their Jew­ish own­ers by Nazi decree.

Young read­ers’ mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties also guid­ed Folman’s approach to the text. The spir­it of the orig­i­nal is pre­served, but cer­tain phras­ings have been giv­en a 21st cen­tu­ry update.

The snarky Secret Annex menus and diet tips he allows his hero­ine harken to the direct address of var­i­ous meta teen come­dies, as well as the blis­ter­ing par­o­dy of the Sara­je­vo Sur­vival Guide, a pur­port­ed trav­el guide writ­ten dur­ing the Siege.

Noble goal of engag­ing the next gen­er­a­tion aside, there are no doubt some purists who will view these inno­va­tions as impo­si­tion. Rest assured that Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graph­ic Adap­ta­tion is sanc­tioned by Anne Frank Fonds, the char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion estab­lished by Anne’s father, Otto.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Only Known Footage of Anne Frank

Read the Poignant Let­ter Sent to Anne Frank by George Whit­man, Own­er of Paris’ Famed Shake­speare & Co Book­shop (1960): “If I Sent This Let­ter to the Post Office It Would No Longer Reach You”

How Art Spiegel­man Designs Com­ic Books: A Break­down of His Mas­ter­piece, Maus

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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