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Lucy Sprague Mitchell
(1878 - 1967)
Lucy Sprague was born on July 2, 1878 in Chicago. Despite being one of six children, she was a shy, nervous, and withdrawn child who suffered from uncontrollable nervous twitches until she was sixteen. That was when she first started to regularly attend school and became interested in John Dewey and Jane Addams’ educational ideas. In 1896 Sprague began attending Radcliffe and, in 1900, she graduated with honors. She then worked at numerous University positions until she became the first Dean of Women’s Studies at the Univeristy of California at Berkeley and also volunteered in Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in San Francisco.
In 1912, Sprague married Wesley Clair Mitchell with whom she had two children and adopted two more. He became a Professor of Economics at Columbia University after the two moved to New York in 1913 where she began to take University classes from John Dewey and visit Caroline Pratt’s Play School. She liked Pratt’s school so much that she turned over her stable and backyard to Pratt’s school, which became the City and Country School. This inspired her to do a number of things. In 1916 she founded The Bureau of Educational Experiments, later known as the Bank Street Collage, with her husband. Then, in 1931, she opened the Co-operative School for Student Teachers, later known as the Co-operative School for Teachers (CST).
In 1921, Lucy Sprague Mitchell published a classic collection of short stories called the Here and Now Storybook. She also published Know Your Children in School in 1954. This book highlighted child development, as well as the outside factors that influence a child’s school life.
Bibliography
Animals, Plants and Machines (1944)
An elementary school reader from the Our Growing World series. Contains an early version of Goodnight Moon.
Read online at archive.org.
Author(s):
Margaret Wise Brown
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Edith Newlin
Illustrator(s):
Clare Bice
Another Here and Now Story Book (1937)
A collection of stories aimed at children of certain ages.
Author(s):
Margaret Wise Brown
Edith Thacher Hurd
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Et al
Illustrator(s):
Rosalie Slocum
Farm and City (1944)
An elementary school reader.
Read online at archive.org.
Author(s):
Margaret Wise Brown
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Illustrator(s):
Anne Fleur
Here and Now Story Book (1921)
An early experiment in pedagogy based on child development studies translated into educational stories.
Author(s):
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Illustrator(s):
Hendrik Willem van Loon
Here and Now Story Book, Revised and Enlarged (1948)
An early experiment in pedagogy based on child development studies translated into educational stories.
Author(s):
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Illustrator(s):
Christine Price
Hendrik Willem van Loon
Mice are Nice (1990)
An anthology of poems about mice.
Author(s):
N. M. Bodecker
Elizabeth Coatsworth
Edward Lear
A. A. Milne
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Et al
Illustrator(s):
Ed Young
Our Country (1945)
Short stories and poems about the history of the United States.
Read online at Internet Archive.
Author(s):
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Dorothy Stall
Illustrator(s):
Kurt Wiese
Read-to-Me Storybook (1947)
An anthology of stories and poems for young children.
Read online at archive.org.
Author(s):
Margaret Wise Brown
Kate Greenaway
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Miriam Clark Potter
Illustrator(s):
Lois Lenski
Red, White and Blue Auto (1943)
Mr. Head, Mr. Red, Mr. White and Mr. Blue learn to work together at the car factory.
Author(s):
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Illustrator(s):
Tibor Gergely
The Taxi that Hurried (1946)
The little taxi gets Tom and his mother to the train station on time. Later editions are considerably shorter.
Read online at archive.org.
Author(s):
Irma Simonton Black
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Jessie Stanton
Illustrator(s):
Tibor Gergely
A Year in the City (1948)
Through the seasons of the year in a big city.
Author(s):
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Illustrator(s):
Tibor Gergely