Stories of America — Season 1, Episode 30: The First Cars
Kids • 15 min • 1 season, 32 episodes
Episode synopsis
This episode introduces children to the earliest automobiles and how they began to change everyday life in America. Through simple narration and reenactments, the program explains how inventors experimented with engines, what these first cars looked like, and why they were such an exciting new idea at the turn of the century. The episode highlights how early drivers learned to navigate rough roads, how communities reacted to this strange new machine, and how the automobile helped shape the modern world. Designed for classroom learning, it offers young viewers a clear, engaging look at the beginnings of American transportation.
About Stories of America
The interconnectedness of all things is a fundamental part of reading motivation projects. Although GPN's Reading Rainbow claims to have invented that idea, Stories of America with host Ann McGregor got there first. It was 1976, America's bicentennial year, and WVIZ-TV of Cleveland wanted something more out of a series aimed at delivering American history, They decided to combine history with reading. The result was Stories of America. Hosting was the familiar face of Ann McGregor, who had enlivened Picture Book Park and Tilson's Bookshop some two years earlier. Stories of America resembled more of a story reading than a history lesson, but it also introduced other elements that became standard Reading Rainbow procedure. There were occasional film sequences, dramatizations, and even an animation. All told, the 32-part Stories of America series ran some 14 years on WVIZ-TV. The station brought the shows back in 1998, and it would be the only WVIZ instructional telev