STRANGER THAN FICTION

OK history buffs (or non-history buffs) - which of the following wild assertions just so happen to be true and which ones are false? Since I have to write about this stuff all the time, I actually know the answers and don’t have to look them up.  See how many you already know….TRUE OR FALSE: 

   

1) Ben Franklin invented the fan chair, which was a rocking chair with a fan on top to blow away flies.

2)  Ben invented a musical instrument that caused dogs to run away and hide and also made people think there were ghosts in their room.

3)  Pocahontas was bald.

4)  She taught her boyfriend, John Smith, how to smoke tobacco.

5)  Before being captured and enslaved, John Smith won a Turkish fortress by making a bunch of explosives and catapulting them into the Turks’ camp while they slept.

6)  George Washington always wore a white wig in public, even as a child.

7)  George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and when his dad asked him about it, he said “I cannot tell a lie, pa.  I did it with my little ax.”

8)  George Washington had scars on his face from a duel.

9)  During the California Gold Rush, a single piece of paper cost $150 but you could get 12 shirts washed and ironed at the Chinese Laundry for $3.

10) During this gold rush, cooks regularly checked chicken gizzards for small gold nuggets.

11)  Frenzied gold seekers from 37 different countries rushed lickety-split straight toward California to seek their fortunes.

12)  Cowboys traveling on The Old Chisholm Trail used to cross the muddy rivers by running on their cows backs.

13)  The trail was finally closed by barbed wire.

14)  Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the very same day just a few hours apart, and they didn’t always get along with their dads.

15)  When Charles Darwin journeyed around the world by ship, he caught a giant octopus and sent it back to England for scientists to study.

16)   Charles Darwin used to ride on horseback with a wild Gaucho cavalry, ride on the backs of gigantic tortoises, and ride in a box on the back of an elephant in true Indian fashion. 

  

17)  In Salem Massachusetts, some people made medicine by combining boiled snippets of children’s hair, spirits of mummies, and the brains of young men who had died a violent death.

18)  During the Salem Witch Trials, nineteen people were burned for the crime of witchcraft.

19) During this time, people of all ages were accused of turning into a ball of light the size of a bushel basket, choking a woman with nails and eggs, stupefying a boy for 12 years, making a wagon plump down into a hole on flat ground, and killing victims with their evil “eye beams.” (A ghost said so.)

AND THE ANSWERS ARE:

1)  False, but he did have such a chair inside his house.

2)  True.  It was called the glass armonica, and before it went out of style for hurting dogs' ears and sounding spooky during seances, it was so popular that Mozart and Beethoven wrote music for it.

 3)   True.  Pre-pubescent Powhatan Indian girls shaved the tops of their heads, and Pocahontas was between 10 and 12 years old.

4)  False.  Of course she was way too young to be John Smith's girlfriend, and besides, he thought smoking tobacco was disgusting.

5)  True, all true.  He was also great at making fireworks.

6) False.  George hated wigs even though they were in style.  If he absolutely had to, he would powder his hair instead.

7)  False.  Parson Mason Locke Weems made up that fake story to get kids to tell the truth like their hero.  Oh, the irony.

8)  False.  The scars were from smallpox.

9)  All true.

10) True again. One time a chicken gizzard panned out at $12.80

11)  False.  They came from more than 70 countries and set off one of the greatest mass migrations in history.

12)  Yup, that's true.  Those guys had talent.

13)  True.  Barbed wire smarts if you're a traveling cow.

14)  True. Their dads didn't seem to think they'd amount to much.

15)  False, false, false.  He did uncover plenty of humongous fossilized bones from extinct giant animals though.

16)  True.  Darwin perched these various backs in Argentina, the Galapagos, and the Isle of Mauritius.  

17)True.  Guilty as charged.

18)  False.  They were hanged, not burned.  A 19th guy was pressed to death by stones.

19)  True.  People really did tell all of these bald-faced lies in court.  AND THERE ARE NO WITCHES!!!

Didn't I tell you truth is stranger than fiction?  So how did you do? Feel free to try this on your students, friends, and enemies, and if they get all the answers right I will send them a lollipop.  (False.)

Cover Story

It was nearly five years from proposal to publication, but now I'm finally holding Master George's People in my hot little hands. To say I'm pleased with how it turned out is an understatement—I'm over the moon! Lori Epstein's stunning photographs are a big reason why. So is the beautiful, powerful design created by National Geographic's Jim Hiscott. Both were true collaborators on this project. Back in June, I wrote in INK about our photo shoot with Lori at Mount Vernon, George Washington's Virginia plantation. Today I asked Jim if he would share with us his process of designing the book.

What look and feel were you striving for with the cover?

Jim: The initial design construct, at least in regard to the typography, came from the idea of broadsides used for the search and capture of runaway slaves, utilizing a blocky and distressed typography. In fact in the title, "Master George's People," there are two different styles that work in concert with each other, one an extended serif font and the other a condensed stencil style. The counterpoint to this is the use of a more elegant and refined condensed serif display font for the subtitle and the large cap indents that launch each chapter. The use of the distressed rules on the cover and the interior was another reference to newspapers and a graphic approach of the period.

How about the inside of the book? The little decorative doodads at the end of the picture captions have a colonial feel to me. Were you aiming to create a sense of period with this and other design elements?

Jim: The overall design tenet I always use, no matter the style, is to create contrasts between things, elements, no matter what they may be, as a way to create energy, impact, and tension. For this book I wanted to reflect the contrast between these two worlds—that of George Washington and the refined manners of the day compared to the life of slaves. Hard/soft if you will. And by using color on the cover as well as on the inside, it was a way to be respectful of the NGKids brand while also trying to create a look that was respectful of two periods of time—present day and the Colonial period. This all helped to give the book a certain dynamic that allowed me to present it in a strong, elegant, and sophisticated manner that hopefully feels contemporary as well. 

What were the challenges of designing a book illustrated with so many different kinds of images, from archival illustrations to historical documents to reenactment photography? (By the way, the photo above was taken by yours truly and does NOT do justice to the real thing.)

Jim:  I know this kind of thing always causes some trepidation from the editorial side of a project. However, I look at having to rely on a diversity of visual images/styles to flesh out a visual story as an asset. Given the challenges of finding images to represent different points of the story, to me, only makes it visually richer, especially when they are framed with the use of photography of reenactments. When you speak of HISTORY many people aren't going to think of it as very interesting. I want to try to create a visual package that helps make the book engaging on one level so it is appealing for the reader to then get absorbed into the story. It also helps to have a captivating manuscript.

Why thank you, Jim. Is there anything else you'd like to share about designing Master George's People?

Jim: I loved working on this book. It was a true pleasure to be able to try and package it in a way that was respectful of the period and the story, while trying to make it visually appealing to today's readers, and to create a sophisticated book that kids would want to read, as if something really special had been created especially for them. Yes, it is a very serious topic, but that doesn't mean it can't be presented in an attractive and sophisticated way that is clean, fresh, and hopefully not so trendy as to become dated. You want a design that has as long a shelf life as possible.

Many thanks to Jim for giving us a glimpse into his creative process. And my personal thanks to him for helping me tell the story of George Washington and the people he held in bondage.

Left to right: Jennifer Emmett (my wonderful editor), me, Jim Hiscott (art director and designer) and Hillary Moloney (illustrations assistant) at Mount Vernon. Missing is photographer Lori Epstein. She's behind the lens!

Connecting to the Past

 I had one of the most exciting experiences in my writing career last month when I joined a team from National Geographic at Mount Vernon--our first president's Virginia estate--for an after-hours photo shoot for my new book, Master George's People: George Washington, His Slaves, and His Revolutionary Transformation. It's coming out in January 2013.

Photo of Mount Vernon by Lori Epstein

I got the idea for this book nearly 5 years ago, when Mount Vernon unveiled a new exhibit, a 16-by-14-foot log cabin modeled on those that housed the slaves who toiled in the fields on George Washington's outlying farms. In 1798 a Polish visitor to Mount Vernon named Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz described "the huts of the Blacks, for one cannot call them by the name of houses" as "wretched" and "more miserable than the most miserable of the cottages of our peasants." I knew Washington owned African American slaves, of course, but I had never really thought about what their lives had been like. Now I started to wonder about these enslaved men, women, and children, and to ponder the irony of the fact that the man who led the American struggle for "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" held hundreds of people in bondage.

I kept going back to Mount Vernon (I can bike there from my house) and visiting the reconstructed slave cabin as well as the greenhouse slave quarters, where the enslaved house servants and artisans lived. I learned the names of individual slaves and some of their stories. I toured the mansion again and again and thought of the servants who cleaned and cooked and waited on the Washington family, of Caroline and Lucy and Frank Lee and Christopher Sheels. I explored the outbuildings along the lanes, and I walked through the gardens and orchards and imagined the children who once played there. I spoke with costumed interpreters--trained role players who portray Washington's family, friends, and slaves--and was blown away by the complexity of their character portrayal, by their creativity and breadth of knowledge. I kept thinking of a remark Dennis Pogue made in an interview. He's Associate Director for Preservation at Mount Vernon. He said that slavery wasn't "the brightest spot in Washington's record. But it's part of his story and America's story and one that needs to be told."

Photographer Lori Epstein, art director Jim Hiscott, and a historic interpreter portraying a slave named Christopher Sheels

I decided I wanted to tell that story for children. When I first proposed the book to my editor, I envisioned it illustrated with archival images and documents. She suggested instead that we explore the possibility of illustrating it in part with reenactment photography, in cooperation with Mount Vernon's character interpretation program. I warmed to the idea after looking at 1776: A New Look at Revolutionary Williamsburg and other children's books National Geographic has illustrated with reenactment photography. Based on meticulous research, the medium brings history vividly to life, in a way that I think can really resonate with readers. Seeing people from the past represented by real human beings, people who except for their clothing look like us or a family member or a neighbor or a classmate or teacher, can create a very powerful connection between then and now. And belief in that is what took me and my editor and a very talented photographer and art director to Mount Vernon last month.

I'm so excited about this book and the story it tells, which includes how George Washington's attitude toward slavery changed over time. I'll be blogging about it again this fall, after INK's summer vacation. But for now I have just a few more picture captions to write and a deadline to meet.

Lori photographs young interpreters playing with clay marbles in front of the reconstructed slave cabin, while I look on.