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"Laurie, come take a look at this."
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Grandpa was reading the newspaper at his desk.
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"There's going to be a Renaissance fair in Buck County. Do you want to go?"
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"What's a Renaissance fair?" Laurie asked, looking up from her book.
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"A Renaissance fair," Grandpa began reading from the newspaper ad, "is a place to see, hear, and taste life as it was during Elizabethan England."
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He looked at Laurie. "That means the time when Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, from 1558 to 1603.
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It was the height of the English Renaissance.
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There will probably be a market, performances, and actors."
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"What does renaissance mean?" Laurie asked.
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"Aren't you taking French at school?" Grandpa said teasingly. "Renaissance means rebirth in French.
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We call the period of European history from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century the Renaissance
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because all of Europe changed dramatically during this time.
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There was a rebirth in art, education, government, and religion.
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It was also a time of great discovery in both the sciences and geography.
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The Renaissance began in Florence, Italy, in the 1300s.
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Florence was a big trading city because it was located neatly between the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
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Many merchants, who used to be part of the lower class, became wealthy.
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This was the beginning of the middle class.
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They weren't nobles or royalty, and they didn't have any fancy titles to their names, but they had money to spend freely.
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They also had free time to think, read, and enjoy life.
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Many scholars think this brought about a renewed interest in art and learning.
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The middle class wanted to spend their wealth on art, books, and music.
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Wealthy families gave money to artists and asked them to make paintings and sculptures for the city.
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Many of these artists are still admired today.
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Let's see, I'm sure I have a book around here somewhere . . ."
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Grandpa stood up and examined his bookshelf.
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"Aha! Artists of the Italian Renaissance," he read, pulling the title from the shelf.
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"I'm sure you'll recognize a lot of stuff in here."
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Laurie flipped through the pages. "The Mona Lisa!" she exclaimed.
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"Right! The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s."
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Laurie turned the page. "Oh! He's naked!" she cried.
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"That's Michelangelo's famous sculpture David," Grandpa answered.
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"During the Renaissance, artists began learning how to create more realistic images of humans.
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They studied the human body carefully, and tried to draw and sculpt what they saw.
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It was really a revolution in art.
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Education in Europe also developed and changed during the Renaissance.
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In the Middle Ages, people learned to read and write so they could study and copy the Bible.
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But people of the Renaissance wanted to study books from classical Greece and Rome.
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This was called new learning or humanism."
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"Humanism?" Laurie echoed. "That's a funny word. Were they studying humans?"
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"Well, yes!" Grandpa answered. "People were curious about what human beings could do with science, art, philosophy—everything!
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They believed that humans had skills, and that these skills could be developed to perfection.
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What's one of your skills, Laurie?" Grandpa asked.
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"Um, I always get As in reading," Laurie replied.
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"So you would have been encouraged to develop that talent by reading classic Greek and Roman books.
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Unfortunately this would only have been encouraged if you were a boy.
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Girls received just basic education and then learned to cook and sew at home.
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Rather than going to a university at age 15, like boys did, girls would probably get married to an older man and start a family."
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"That's not fair." Laurie frowned.
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"No, it's not. But many things came out of the Renaissance that everybody, including women, could appreciate later.
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One of the greatest inventions was the printing press, which was created in Germany in 1440.
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Thanks to the printing press, books didn't have to be copied by hand anymore.
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So they were cheaper and more people could buy them.
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Libraries were built and regular people, not just nobles or clergymen, learned how to read.
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The printing press changed European—no, human—society forever!
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Can you imagine a world without books, Laurie?"
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Laurie shook her head forcefully. "No way!"
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"Many things were invented during the Renaissance.
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Have you heard of the Italian Galileo Galilei?
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Human eyes saw the surface of the moon for the first time with his telescope.
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He was also influential in getting people to accept the idea that the Earth moves around the sun, and not the other way around."
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"Of course the Earth moves around the sun!
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Even I know that and I'm only in fourth grade." Laurie giggled.
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"Will we see Galileo's telescope at the fair?" she asked.
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"No. Galileo was Italian and we're going to an English fair, remember?
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The Renaissance began in Italy, but later it spread to England, France, Germany, and all of Europe.
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We'll probably see actors playing famous people of the English Renaissance, like the writer William Shakespeare.
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Or Sir John Harington, inventor of the flushing toilet—another great invention of the Renaissance!
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And at the market I bet we'll see barrel makers, blacksmiths, and milliners."
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"Millionaires!" Laurie said, surprised.
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"No—milliners! They make hats," Grandpa answered with a chuckle.
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"Hats and wigs were in fashion back then.
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In fact, anyone over age 12 was required to wear a hat.
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During the Renaissance, clothing was a symbol of wealth and class—by law.
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For example, nobody except the queen was allowed to wear purple.
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And peasants weren't allowed to wear pink or gold-colored fabric!"
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"That's crazy!" Laurie cried. She looked down at her own clothes.
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"What are we going to wear to the fair?"
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"Well, we could go in our regular clothes.
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But it would be fun to get dressed up, wouldn't it?"
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Grandpa grinned. He grabbed a long black feather from his desk and stuck it behind her ear.
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Laurie's eyes shined. "Yeah, it would! I can't wait."