The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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NEW YORK, Sunday—From Castine, Maine to Westbrook, Connecticut is quite a long drive, but having missed a night with Esther Lape last week I decided to ask her if I could spend a night this week. And so we started off early Saturday morning and found it was no difficult feat to cover the intervening miles by dinnertime.

I had a delightful visit and next morning motored over to Hyde Park, where I spent a few hours getting my house in order for my niece and her four children, who arrive on Tuesday of this week, and for my own return on Wednesday evening. In the meantime I shall do a little more traveling, but I shall tell you about that later.

Now I want to bring to your attention some publications which I think anyone with young people in the house would be delighted to have. They can be obtained from World Youth, El Quito Road, Los Gatos, California, and the two samples sent me are called "Adventures in Egypt" and "Adventures in India." Though written primarily for children, I found them interesting reading. I have never been in Egypt, but the booklet on India brought back many pleasant memories. In a letter that accompanied these two booklets, Carolyn D. Smiley tells me that they are trying to give children an understanding of other children all over the world. They have published 60 booklets, and each contains "adventure stories laid in some one country, showing the children (8 to 14) of that country in a friendly, attractive light."

Judging from the two I have, there is so much of educational value in them that I think a set of the whole series should be in every school. I am going to order one for my oldest granddaughter in Hyde Park to take to school with her. She will be in junior high school next year and I think these will help any teacher who wants to lead her students out into the world of today. Those of you who have read Lillian Smith's "The Stranger" will remember one of the young men who kept a motel and talked about the "good teacher" who had made the whole world come alive for them even though they never left their little one-room school in Georgia.

Another book which I have just read in galley sheets is entitled "Your Deafness Is Not You." It is written by Mrs. Grace E. Barstow Murphy, and is a record of her own experiences as a totally deaf person. It is written with care and sensitivity and deep understanding, and I think it will help anyone who suffers either from partial or complete loss of hearing. It will also be a great help to the understanding of those who can hear and sometimes make it so hard for those who can't. Mrs. Murphy's husband wrote a book which my husband greatly admired, "Oceanic Birds of South America," and she came to tea with me once at the White House. She knew one of our neighbors in Hyde Park, Maunsell Crosby, who shared her husband's interest in birds and who gave her the title for this book by saying to her many times, "Your deafness is not you."

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.; REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 2, 1954

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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