Stories of America — Season 1, Episode 8: Ben Franklin
Kids • 30 min • 1 season, 32 episodes
Episode synopsis
This episode introduces children to the remarkable life of Benjamin Franklin—printer, inventor, writer, and statesman. Through simple narration and reenactments, the program highlights his curiosity, his famous experiments with electricity, and his many practical inventions that improved everyday life. It also explores Franklin’s role in shaping the young nation through diplomacy and leadership. Designed for classroom learning, the episode presents Franklin as a creative thinker whose ideas and contributions continue to influence America today.
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