"To understand our attachment to the world, it is necessary to add a childhood, our childhood to each archetype. We cannot love water, fire, the tree without putting a love into them, a friendship which goes back to our childhood. We love them with childhood. . . . we love them in a new found childhood, in a childhood reanimated with that childhood which is latent in each of us."
- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie

"Recess!" is a daily, three-minute program for adults that explores the dynamic cultures of childhood, past and present, and around the world. We take you on this daily journey through biographical and historical notes, commentaries, audio essays, original stories, and reviews of the latest books, music, movies, television shows, and other media being produced for children. One of our listeners commented that our program "sounds like a New Yorker for kid's stuff." We were flattered to hear this, because, from the beginning, we've wanted "Recess!" to be a regular voice on public radio on behalf of children's culture and its vital, lasting importance.

Now entering our sixth year on the air, with over 1300 programs in our archives, the goal of our program continues to be to provide a key resource for concerned adults -- parents, teachers, librarians, writers, artists, health care professionals, policy- makers, and creators of media for young people.

It is impossible at present for interested adults to find this extraordinary range of material in a place that is readily available to them. But if we wish to improve the quality of what we produce as a society for our children, we must construct places where adults can find material about children's culture, that formative confluence of the arts and literature, of folklore and the oral tradition, of historical and biographical, social and imaginative forces -- that are so significant to all of us in our lives.

In order to understand childhood, the English writer E. Nesbit once said, it is essential to remember childhood. That is one of the overarching purposes of "Recess!" -- to provide a way for people to remember their own childhoods so that they can better grasp, respond to, inform and create works for the children who are a part of their lives today and for the children of the future.

"Recess!" is available free of charge through satellite uplink or CD each month to the nearly 500 interlinked public radio stations across the country. "Recess" is currently being heard in cities and listening areas from Florida to Montana, and from New Hampshire to Oregon.