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People are arguing a lot about American history this year as the country turns 250 years old. If the adults can't agree, imagine how hard it is for kids to figure out our national story. The folks at the Library of Congress have one idea - put as many original artifacts in front of kids as possible. They've built a new exhibition for children called The Source. NPR's Dianna Douglas paid a visit.
DIANNA DOUGLAS, BYLINE: It's a field trip day for 11-year-old Declan Hurley of Washington, D.C. He and some other fifth-graders came to the Library of Congress' new gallery. They've studied American history in school this year - the 13 colonies, the Civil War. But this is different. Here, he's thumbed through old posters and photographs and watched parts of old movies.
DECLAN HURLEY: Most of the stuff we were doing was with film. We did a lot of film. And then we were - we spended a lot of time with the sound and the image.
DOUGLAS: He watched Babe Ruth swinging his bat in a silent film from the 1920s. He saw an even older animated short of a dinosaur. Here, he and his classmates could grab a record, put it on a record player and hear music straight out of American history.
(SOUNDBITE OF GEORGE GERSHWIN'S "RHAPSODY IN BLUE")
DECLAN: This just shows the library aren't just about books. Library's about all this stuff, like film, sound, text and the image.
DOUGLAS: The Library of Congress has nearly every book ever published in the United States, and many other things that tell America's story - maps, letters, even dolls. It's an enormous, overwhelming collection that makes this the largest library in the world. Yes, it's for Congress, but also anyone trying to research the story of the country - like Declan.
DECLAN: It was like, oh. This is, like, really cool, and you can learn, like, a whole lot of stuff in here.
DOUGLAS: The exhibition is designed to appeal to kids from all over the country, whether they grow up a few blocks away on Capitol Hill or on a farm in Iowa.
CALEB SINNWELL: Both sides of my family farm. I grew up working on a hog farm, and I grew up working on a grain farm.
DOUGLAS: Caleb Sinnwell was also at the Library of Congress' new gallery for kids. He's a 19-year-old from Northeast Iowa who has been a history buff ever since elementary school, and he helped design this exhibition for kids like him.
SINNWELL: Actually getting to research and hold primary sources or have it on your computer screen with an interview or a newspaper clipping - it's very - it's completely different.
DOUGLAS: Completely different from watching a history explainer on YouTube, which he also does.
SINNWELL: In my free time, whenever I wasn't on the farm or playing with the cousins or that kind of stuff, I'd just watch a video or two about something I found interesting, whether that was the Vietnam War and the Korean War to just 1960s Iowa Hog Lift and that kind of stuff or the sinking of the Sultana.
DOUGLAS: This gallery tries to lean into that natural curiosity. It's colorful and durable, just like the exhibits at hundreds of children's museums all over the country. The curator, Shari Werb, hopes kids feel extremely welcome when they walk through the heavy doors of the library.
SHARI WERB: You know, if they start talking about this library as their own or that they found something that's really very interesting, that's the beginning of their journey as researchers.
DOUGLAS: One thing these little researchers may figure out is that the teaching of history has been in flux for a long time. The Library of Congress doesn't present a single narrative of American history. More like a bunch of snapshots that may help young people see just how we got here.
Dianna Douglas, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAMBC SONG, "LOVE LIKE THAT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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