Who Gets To Write What?

I tuned into ESPN the other night, clicking away at my laptop as I waited for the Stanford-North Carolina women’s basketball game to begin. The end of the Louisville-Maryland contest was on. There was about a minute left, and Louisville was losing by 10 points, which pretty much guaranteed Maryland the win. But wait. A Louisville player, number 23, floated in a terrific three-point shot with 30 seconds left. Then the same player hit another three-pointer with 18 seconds left. And yet another with five seconds left. Maryland had made two foul shots during the Louisville run, and the score was now 76-73. But it was Louisville’s ball. One more three-pointer would send the game into overtime.

I’m a sucker for an athlete who performs well under pressure, so I put down my laptop and stared at the screen. The announcers were full of praise for the Louisville player, a senior named Shoni Schimmel. I have rarely seen anyone with a smoother, more poetic stroke. When Maryland took a timeout before the game's last play, I went back to my computer and Googled her.

I admit I don’t follow college basketball as much as I should. If I did, I would have known that Shoni, and her sister Jude, who also plays for the University of Louisville, are a genuine phenomenon. Their games attract thousands of people who drive from all over the U.S. and Canada to see them. The sisters are Native Americans who grew up on the Umatilla reservation in Pendleton, Oregon. Their success has galvanized Native fans and even attracted a filmmaker, who made a documentary about them titled Off the Rez.

As I read about the Schimmel sisters, I thought, “This is a great story. I should write it.” You probably know that I’ve made a career bringing the true tales of athletes and other bold and brilliant women to the mainstream. As first Shoni and then Jude graduate from college and enter the WNBA, their journeys should have the makings of a great book.

But then I wondered, “Should I write it?” In recent months, there has been a lot of discussion about the underrepresentation of people of color in children’s books. The postings on multicultural literature on the listserv of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, were coming fast and furious the entire month of February. A few weeks later, Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers wrote companion essays in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times under the title, “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?”

One of the strands on the CCBC listserv focused on who actually writes books with characters or subjects of color, and as a corollary, who should write those books. A number of posters were pretty adamant that they thought books were more authentic—and by extension more acceptable—when they were written by members of the groups they portrayed. By that logic, a book about the Schimmel sisters would be best by a Native person. But why should authors be limited by their backgrounds? I’ve written more than a dozen books, including three biographies, and I’ve never written one with a main character who shares my Jewish heritage. For me, part of the joy of writing nonfiction is getting to explore new worlds while developing the context to tell the story.

That’s what I was thinking as I read many of the CCBC posts. And now I’m finally putting it into words. People expressed a valid concern about getting a more diverse pool of authors (and editors) producing children’s books, but I don’t feel that any authors should be dissuaded from tackling any topics that ignite their passions. Every voice is valid and every perspective is worth considering as we inspire kids' curiosity about and understanding of the world around them.

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For the record, Louisville didn’t win the game, despite an inspired play that put the ball in Schimmel’s hands for one more three-point attempt. She shot, and the ball hit the rim and ricocheted away as time ran out. It was Shoni’s last college game, but hopefully the prelude to an exciting professional career. Perhaps someone will write a book about Shoni and her sister one day. Perhaps it will be me.

All Indians Weren't Bad People

I had the pleasure of being on Neil Hally's Total Education blogtalk a few weeks ago with Vicki Cobb. The first question Neil asked me was if I'd always been interested in history, to which I had to say no. Sadly, like a lot of kids (most?) I wasn't at all intrigued by any of the history taught through 6th grade. It all seemed like a dry procession of names and dates and facts heaped upon facts. This all changed in 7th grade.*
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On the very first day of school that year we were introduced to a new teacher, a man. I attended a parochial school and Mr. Polino was the first male teacher ever hired. He was short and stocky and tough looking, and he began class that day by standing at the front, armed folded across his chest, staring hard at us. He never said a word but he definitely did not looked pleased. Gradually, as more and more kids stopped chattering to pay attention, the room quieted. I thought, "uh, oh, this isn't going to be good" and tied to disappear behind the kid in front of me. At this point Mr. Polino said in a strong voice, "All Indians weren't bad people!"*
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By Indians he meant Native-Americans and the initial reaction to his simple statement ranged from surprised laughter to astonished gasps to scatterings of "what's he talking about?" Mr. P. then went on to tell us that we'd all been brainwashed into believing the worst about Native-Americans by really bad TV shows and movies. This produced a gentle murmuring of protest from the class; Mr. P. responded by asking us to be honest: "When you think about Indians what are the images that come to mind immediately." Several hands shot into the air and Mr. P. called on one after the other for answers, all of which turned out to be negative stereotypes based on -- guess what -- bad TV shows and movies.*
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I realized that Mr. P. had trapped us, but he wasn't gloating about out manueuvering us or even lecturing us on wasting our time on trashy programs. He didn't even warn us that we should do better research before forming opinions. In fact, he was actually smiling by this time and seemed almost friendly as he began talking about the Lenni Lanape people and their accomplishments. And he did this for well over an hour. Telling us about their lifestyle, what local rivers and roads bore names using their language, how they had tried to maintain their lands through various treaties only to be betrayed by white settlers. It wasn't just the details he was revealing that grabbed my attention; Mr. P. was clearly animated and passionate about the subject and you could feel that excitement in his every word, every gesture. I sat up pretty tall in my seat so I could see and hear Mr. P. clearly. Afterward, I remember thinking that a whole new world had opened before me, a world where the past held secrets that I could uncover if I just did a little bit of legwork.*
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I think about Mr. Polino every time I start a new project. Not that I think of myself as an accomplished teacher who might inspire young readers to a life of history. I have too much respect for the heavy lifting teachers have to do to engage and inform kids. But I do tell myself to put aside the cares of the day, to focus my thoughts and energy so I can bring as much passion and excitement to whatever subject I might be writing about. Hopefully, if I can maintain that focus from start to finish, one of my books might aid and abet a teacher in opening new worlds to one or more of their students.*

Nonfiction in Doodles

There’s been a lot of discussion about invented aspects of nonfiction lately, although of course it has always been an issue: whether to use only direct quotes in context, and not to envision conversations; whether to connect points A and C with a B that seems necessary but is unknown; whether -- and how -- to fill in the blanks of a narrative.

Although the answers are full of grey area (and controversy) they seem more black and white to me than do answers to similar questions about illustrations. While illustrators must use real, reliable references, they also make tricky decisions about what to show -- and wander the border between fact and fiction struggling to envision a scene that demonstrates the heart of the story being told or the situation being described.

Take my current work, for example. I’m writing this blog post in a break from my forthcoming graphic article, White Whale on the Go, a Humanimal Doodle (For more on these, please see my Humanimal post or the Humanimal section of my website. ) Here’s the story this doodle tells:

The tiny Iñupiat Eskimo village of Point Lay, Alaska depends for its food on beluga and bowhead whales that migrate through. The Iñupiat have dispensation to hunt a small number of whales for subsistence. Scientists trying to learn more about beluga behavior and physiology asked the Iñupiat for access to the whales -- specifically, they asked for help catching whales so they could be tagged with data transmitters that would track their paths, and for tissue and blood samples from recently killed whales. These samples were used to compare the wild beluga with belugas kept at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut.

After several years of cooperative work, two Point Lay men were invited to visit Mystic to see the labs where the research was conducted and to visit the aquarium’s whales. Enthralled, they asked that other people from Point Lay be invited, and they were quite specific about whom: high schoolers. Not only did the men want the cooperative effort to continue -- because scientists are monitoring the effects on whales of climate change, expanded shipping lanes, and increased drilling for oil -- but they wanted the next generation to lock things in. Moreover, they hoped their young people might be inspired to go into science.

This year, four Point Lay girls visited Mystic, and I drove up to meet them and to talk to the scientists they were working with. I came home with good notes and great quotes, and now I had to turn them into a visual story. My Humanimal Doodles are all, uh, doodled, so photographs were out of the question. But I did have photographs showing the girls meeting Mystic’s three beluga whales, wearing chest-high waders to enter the chilly pool.

Well, what do you think I should have done? Copy a photograph as a drawing? If I did, I worried what the photographer might think. What about attaching a quote to a drawing copied from a photograph? That seemed wrong, too, because the things the girls told me weren’t associated with particular moments that might have been photographed.

What I came up with, instead, was an imaginary situation completely based in truth. Here it is: the four girls in their waders, which definitely happened; standing together and acting goofy the way people do when they put on waders, because they feel a little silly, their feet all heavy and weird; and saying things to each other that they had actually only said to me. In identifying them with their actual names and ages, I feel as though I’m saying “This is true and factual.” Overall, it isn’t exactly correct historically, if you will, but each piece is factual. In the end, I made a judgment call that the girls would not object to the context in which I placed them and their comments.

I am reminded of a favorite quotation: “Things are not untrue just because they never happened.” -- Dennis Hanley

In my Humanimal Doodles, I find myself continually confronted with these kinds of situations and decisions, and frequently check things out with the subjects of the articles. I’m lucky to be able to do this, since they’re around, and I can call them up or email them my work. And their affirmative responses to their portrayals gives me confidence that if what I am doing “works” for them in telling their stories, then it works for me in writing them up.