author
Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
b. 1875
Best known for Where We Live: A Home Geography, this early 20th-century educator wrote with a practical, observant sense of place. Her work invites young readers to look closely at the streets, buildings, people, and natural world around them.
1 Audiobook
Where We Live A Home Geography
by Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
About the author
Emilie Van Beil Jacobs was an American educator and author born in 1875. She is credited with Where We Live: A Home Geography, a school geography text published in Philadelphia in 1913 and 1914.
The book presents geography as something children can begin to understand through everyday life. Rather than starting with distant maps and abstractions, it moves outward from school, streets, neighborhoods, transportation, plants, animals, and the wider world. In the book, she is identified as supervising principal of the Richardson L. Wright School in Philadelphia.
Little biographical information seems to be widely available online beyond her authorship and educational role, so this portrait stays close to what can be confirmed. Even so, her surviving work suggests a teacher interested in helping children learn by paying attention to the world right in front of them.