75ef837914bdc6a9d4fcfc0c7976ee7c.jpg

ON THE ROAD: A world of imagination in a trunk comes free from the Cotsen Children’s Library

By Adam Grybowski Staff Writer
    A teacher interrupted Dana Sheridan’s lesson at least once last year. Ms. Sheridan was visiting the class as part of an outreach program for the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University. The program aims to bring the library’s extraordinary collection directly to educators. The lesson had excited the teacher as much as the students, and she blurted out the answer before the students had time to respond.
    Ms. Sheridan, the education and outreach coordinator for the Cotsen Children’s Library, is the engine behind the pilot program, which launched in the fall of 2006. Last year she took “Cotsen in the Classroom” to about 80 classrooms in 25 schools, reaching more than 1,500 students.
    The materials for each lesson come packed in a trunk. Five new trunks are available this year, and the program has expanded to include fourth and fifth grade. Ms. Sheridan will travel to any kindergarten-through-fifth grade classroom and to home schools within a 10-mile radius of Princeton University. A lesson runs about 45 minutes.
    “The trunk program I have a real affection for,” she says. “It truly is a pinnacle of education. And the best thing is Cotsen can offer it for free.”
    The Cotsen Children’s Library, a division within the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library, is endowed with an $8 million benefaction of Lloyd E. Cotsen, Class of ‘50. “Cotsen in the Classroom” doesn’t come cheap. The program provides materials for students to take home, including a Beatrix Potter sketchbook, a paper globe modeled after an 1825 French toy and a combination diary/scrapbook based on Hans Christian Andersen’s original.
    Ms. Sheridan estimates it takes her 100 hours — two and a half weeks of solid work — to put a trunk together. She holds herself to a high standard. “That might be the graduate student in me — there’s a lot of research, reading, and note taking involved,” she says. “I have to be a bit of an expert on the topic — especially now that the program’s available for fourth and fifth graders. I’m always astounded by how sophisticated the kids are.”
    Ms. Sheridan chooses the subjects by considering the wishes of the teacher, the materials at hand and her own interests. Eric Johnson — former assistant to Cotsen’s curator, Andrea Immel — helps her to search the collection to find the best material. For the Beatrix Potter trunk, the connection was obvious. Peter Rabbit is still a popular story, and the library has extensive materials. For the Hans Christian Andersen trunk, a teacher requested a lesson on fairy tales.
    Once Ms. Sheridan chooses the subject, she tries to match the lesson with New Jersey core curriculum standards, shaping the presentation and adding the hands-on material so kids can understand and enjoy it.
    “It all shakes down to a rough script,” she says. “It’s almost like putting on a play, and then it boils down to the performance.”
    Although similar programs are usually mailed to educators, Ms. Sheridan brings them to schools herself, hoping to make the experience easy for teachers.
    “I’m astounded this hasn’t happened before,” Ms. Sheridan says, adding that trunk programs are not unusual.
    The goal of Cotsen’s first outreach coordinator, Bonnie Bernstein, was to raise awareness of the gallery, according to Ms. Sheridan. This was eight years ago, when children’s literacy programs were not as widely available as today. Ms. Bernstein’s background was with national literacy programs.
    Ms. Sheridan received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Virginia, focusing on how children learn in informal environments. She designed programs for patients at the UVA’s Children Hospital, developed tours for the permanent exhibitions at UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, and coordinated programs at the Virginia Discovery Museum.
    Ms. Sheridan’s background in museums drove her to focus on the library’s research collections — a treasure trove of rare and original children’s books, manuscripts, prints, artwork and educational toys. The collection represents materials in more than 30 languages from the 15th century to the present day.
    The materials do not circulate, and it’s not always easy for classes to come to the library. The space is not designed for school visits, in any case. Ms. Sheridan wanted to diversify Cotsen’s programs and bring some material out of the gallery.
    One new trunk examines manuscript production circa 1500. To convey the work, time and expense of producing and illustrating a single manuscript page before the advent of the printing press, Ms. Sheridan displays the scribe’s tools — quill, ink horn, pumice stone (for erasing mistakes) and calf skin, which was used as paper. Manuscript pages from the library’s collections are reproduced on about a dozen display boards. Finally, Ms. Sheridan demonstrates how a printing press works with a miniature replica of the 1432 Gutenberg press.
    She considers feedback from students and teachers to be invaluable, finding that teachers excel at constructive criticism. They tell her when material goes over the students’ heads or if a connection is not clear enough. Despite such kinks, Ms. Sheridan received almost 100 percent positive returns last year.
    She says the 45-minute lesson goes by in a flash and that it can be difficult to find the right note to end on when the class is excited, so she encourages students to e-mail her with questions after she’s packed the trunk and gone.
    “I like to keep the dialogue open,” she says, “especially if a kid is curious enough to ask a really good question.”
The Cotsen Children’s Library on the Web: www.ccl.princeton.edu.