Social studies is a field in crisis. The crisis stems from failure to establish the very foundation of social studies’ purpose in public education: civic education. Social studies advocates have never put forth a coherent method for teaching civic education because policymakers and the public have been unable to agree upon a general definition of civic education. This issue has disrupted the field since the early days. As educators sought to include civic education within public schools as...

A Centennial Celebration presented by The Children’s Museum of Los Angeles & Otherworld Media. Afterword by Ray Bradbury. Unabridged audio adaptation, winner of the Gold Parents’ Choice Award and the Golden Headset Award.

Written in the winter of 1849, The Scarlet Letter unfolds the story of Hester Prynne, a young woman branded as an adulteress in the harsh Puritan world of seventeenth-century New England. As Hester calls on her inner strength to transcend her shame, the scarlet letter ceases to be a stigma and finally becomes Hester's symbol of self-affirmation. This dramatic reading heightens the sense of lyric poetry that permeates every line of Nathaniel Hawthorne's great novel.