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