This issue of KIDS, dated February 17, 1998, was written and produced by students of the New Vista High School in the Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colorado.

The KIDS Report is published with the support of the Internet Scout Project and the National Science Foundation.

American StoryMasters Reviewed by Jennifer H.

These sites contain the full texts of several stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and stories, books, and speeches by Mark Twain. I used the sites to find good stories by each author because our teacher had suggested their stories collectively represented much of what our country was like in the nineteenth Century. For each book the site provides you with the individual chapters; all of the texts are linked to other sites that discuss the text or the life and times of the author. Your Mining Co. Guide to Mark Twain also contains a newsletter and calendar of events relating to Twain. I was surprised to discover that there are many Web sites providing texts of print literature; the web isn't just a computer place. You can find some of these full text sites on Andrew Pfouts' American Literature page (reviewed later). The Mining Company's general site is also interesting, by the way. It's operated by a business, and there are a few ads to deal with. But the site contains a ton of information on many different topics; it's worth checking out.
URLs:
Twice-Told Tales: 1837, 1851
http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/ttt.html
Your Mining Company Guide to Mark Twain
http://marktwain.miningco.com/

Alfred Lord Tennyson: An Overview Reviewed by Brendan B.

This site has everything about the poetry that Tennyson wrote, including a timeline of his life, information about political and social events at the time (with a lot on Victorianism), and analyses of the individual poems. The timeline was especially useful, and it took me very little time to find it from the overview page. I also found the discussion of the poems helpful. These analyses, written by various professors and other qualified people, were of the quality you find in a good book. I don't know who put this site together, but it is by far the most informative, well-organized and helpful resource I found for my research project on Tennyson.

The pages load quickly and the information is easy to find. Every page has good graphics, but not too many of them. There is no wasted space or download time. The main improvement I can think of would be to fit the overview page on a medium-sized screen without scrolling. I found one dead link, which should be fixed. It would also be good if there were a list of people to contact with a question, or maybe a chat session.
URL: http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/tennyson/tennyov.html

A Victorian Elegance Reviewed by Jamie S.

Even though this is a commercial web page, it has a lot of really good information about Victorian fashion -- basically, pictures and detailed descriptions of period clothing. It also has a large selection of clothing from other vintage eras. The graphics on this page are small, so they load with relative efficiency (with some exceptions); you can click on each little picture to get a larger version. The site has the apparel well organized into sections on clothing, accessories, jewelry, collectibles, wedding clothes, and mourning attire. The site features many views of each of the clothing items -- front, back, and close-ups of sleeves and necklines. Every item has at least one photograph, plus a detailed description about the use of the item, when it was used, and anything else interesting or useful to know about the item. Even though this site wasn't meant to be an educational site, it proved very useful and interesting to me. One word of caution: The people who made the site are selling the clothes, and they're seriously expensive. I don't advocate any purchases off this site.
URL: http://victorianelegance.com/

Victorian Morality Reviewed by Amelia A.

For my lit project, I wanted to find out about the Victorians; we heard in class that they were pretty strange. Sure enough. The two sites I used told me about a lot of secret behavior and fake moral beliefs. I learned the meaning of the word "hypocrite." The sites are produced by a university literary journal, so they're pretty difficult reading and there isn't much in the way of entertaining graphics. However, they were worth it for me; I learned a lot. Note to teachers and parents: You don't need to worry about kids finding dirty pictures and words on these pages. There aren't any pictures, and the text is way too intellectual for smut-searching (they won't get past the first paragraph).
URLs:
Victorian Studies
http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress/journals/victorian/vitoc.html
[Note: This URL has been updated to reflect a change in address. This is not the original URL reviewed.]
Sexualities in Victorian Britain
http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress/fall96/miller.html

Virginia Woolf Web Reviewed by Summer D.

This extremely helpful site on Virginia Woolf was created by some group of Woolf-howling people. It includes a detailed timeline of her life, various works of hers, and links to essays about her (such as discussions about her mental health). It goes into great detail about various people, places, and things in her life. If you're a fan (and who isn't?), the site has a calendar with upcoming Virginia Woolf and related events.
URL: http://orlando.jp.org/VWWARC/index.html
[Note: This URL has been updated to reflect a change in address. This is not the original URL reviewed.]

The History of D. H. Lawrence Reviewed by Rexx M.

I like this web site because it provides a personal look at D. H. Lawrence. The site contains many facts about Lawrence; they're mainly about little day-to-day stuff in his life, like people Lawrence knew and the town he was born and grew up in. That figures, because the site is maintained by a school in the town of Eastwood, Colorado, where Lawrence was born. The main feature of the site is the "Thin Blue Line," which represents the walking tour one would take to "see" the author in his home town.
URL: http://www.eastwood.co.uk/dhl/dhl_home.htm
[Note: This resource may no longer be available. Can you help us find it?]

Study Guides for Various Works Reviewed by Kyle S.

This web site is perfect for finding information on foreign literature, classic books, poetry, and even some classical music. The site contains study guides written by a professor at Washington State University for students in his classes, and it's clear he wants them to know a lot. There aren't many graphics; it's basically text. If you want to know about classic literature, this is a great place. The study guides consist of chapter-by-chapter questions and answers on the books, poems, and some songs; plus there is a huge collection of sources and commentaries. The site is probably best for preparing seminar questions (for Socratic discussion) or just for understanding the literature. Some of the study guides are listed below:

Science Fiction:
H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds; Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles; Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz; Stanislaw Lem, Solaris; Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed; Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner; Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; William Gibson, Neuromancer.

18th and 19th Century European Classics:
Beethoven, Symphony No. 9; Verdi, La Traviata; Voltaire, The Philosophical Dictionary; Goethe, Faust; Zola, Germinal; Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground.

Love in the Arts:
Chinese and Japanese Love Poetry; Kalidasa, Sakuntala; Nizami, Layla and Majnun; Egyptian Love Poetry from the New Kingdom; The Song of Songs; Classical Greek and Roman Love Poems; Ovid, Loves, The Art of Love and The Remedies for Love; Classic English Love Poems; Marie de France, Lays; Mystical Love Poetry; Medieval Love Songs; Renaissance Love Songs; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet; Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Cleves; Bernstein, West Side Story; Modern Women's Love Poetry.

Anglophone Literature of India, Africa, and the Caribbean:
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood; Athol Fugard, "Master Harold" and The Boys; Nadine Gordimer, "The Bridegroom," "The Gentle Art," "Six Feet of the Country," "Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can Meet?," and "The Train from Rhodesia;" George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin; R. K. Narayan, The Guide; Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses.
URL: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/guides_index.html

Chinese Art and Literature Reviewed by Alexis N.

My interest in Chinese classical art, like landscape paintings and calligraphy, brought me to this web site. I was instantly attracted to the multiple links to art galleries, museums, pages on art history, and the various pages offering vivid images of classic paintings. But the site doesn't just focus on painting; it provides insights and representations of seal carvings, graphic art and printing, classic literature (including novels, poetry, and philosophy), and the mythology of dragons. The site layout is easy to follow and uses graphics to enhance its visual appeal. Throughout the site one gets the feeling of extraordinary beauty.
URL: http://www.chinapage.org/china-rm.html
[Note: This URL has been updated to reflect a change in address. This is not the original URL reviewed.]

The Virtual Library ("American Literature" and "World Literature") Reviewed by Casey B.

Our teacher got tired of students cruising aimlessly around the Web to find information about books and stories we were reading; he thought we could find a lot of full texts of classic literature (which would save us money). So he started collecting links on two web pages -- one for American Lit and one for World Lit. The World Literature section provides a huge number of links to easy and clear information on authors and literature from all over the world. In fact, most of the sites other people have reviewed here were linked to this site. The linked sites generally load very quickly and are well organized. The World Literature section allows users to browse around to find many stories, poems, and authors from all regions of the world. The texts linked to this web site are somewhat limited, mainly short stories and poems (of which there are actually quite a few). The bulk of the information in the various sites is about the authors (what they have experienced, what they have written). If you're looking for short stories (especially from Europe and Africa) or you need some research help in world literature, this site is for you.
URL: http://robin-nvh.bvsd.k12.co.us/classes/pfouts/

New Vista Virtual Library ("Original Blueprint") Reviewed by Aja D.

Teachers and students at our school are constructing a library that will provide hundreds of links to Web sites as well as other electronic library sources. They've been working on it for only a few months, but already they've collected a lot of sites (mostly in social studies and language arts). The site is very well organized, with a diagram on the first page to guide you to the areas you want to search. I think it's helpful how the categories in the libraries have categories inside of them. I found it easy to find everything. Of course, they're planning to put a lot more in to the various categories (I hope). This "library" is a long way from being completed. One thing they need to do is replace that amateur-looking diagram they're using to show the main areas of the library. Maybe they could make a real blueprint.
URL: http://robin-nvh.bvsd.k12.co.us/virtlib/

These Internet resources were evaluated on the basis of the Site Selection Guidelines that the students developed. Questions and comments can be sent to teacher Stevan Kalmon, kalmon@bvsd.k12.co.us

Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-1998. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the KIDS Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The Internet Scout Project provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The Government has certain rights in this material.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin - Madison or the National Science Foundation.