Only When I Laugh

Last week I was at NEA signing See How They Run, my new book about presidential elections. (Full disclosure: My favorite part of the afternoon was seeing the NEA delegates from Nebraska on the convention floor wearing corn hats.) The second best thing was a compliment from a social studies teacher. “My kids are going to really like this book,” she said, “because it’s…it’s…well, it’s funny.”

I couldn’t have received higher praise. That’s what I was aiming for, in large part, because my own fifth grade civics experience was mind-numbing. The text I read was delivered in the driest way possible—all the blood, sweat and tears of creating and maintaining our political system desiccated into a Sahara of facts listed for their own sake. Of course, it was the style of the times, but a pretty stupid style if you think about it. When an author presents an idea and illustrates it with a compelling story, a kid will remember that idea. Make it funny and the kid will stick around to read more. Humor can be the spoonful of sugar that keeps kids turning pages.

I’m not saying every book should resemble a comedy routine. Mine don’t. Plenty of subjects don’t lend themselves to humor (unlike our political system!). There are others that are simply no joking matter.

But humor can be very useful. First of all, it’s entertaining, nothing wrong with that. As I’ve said before, it can keep a reader engaged long enough to learn something. It can deal with weighty material as well. Humor allows you to sidle up to a biting truth without being too biting, to take the edge off something that’s just too tragic. Humor lets you make a point without sounding as if you’re preaching or wagging your finger at your readers.

Despite these invaluable attributes, humor isn’t respected much at all. Let me be clear, people like it but if they must go public, humor quickly becomes a guilty pleasure—the beach read, the restful interlude before undertaking something more worthy. While awards aren’t always a measure of timeless excellence, they do indicate what our culture thinks of as quality at the time they are given. How often do comedies win the Oscar for best picture? What proportion of the Newbery winning books were written to amuse? The Sibert? Let’s face it, people often think that humor is literature’s “less than,” an artless country bumpkin compared to Literature with a capital “L.”

I often talk about this issue with my friend David Elliott, who writes wonderfully funny picture books and middle-grade novels among other things. He told me that the Children’s Laureate of Great Britain Michael Rosen has helped create the Roald Dahl Funny Prize open to fiction and nonfiction alike. While I wish that prizes for humorous works weren’t separate (haven’t we all learned by now that separate is never equal?), at least England is acknowledging that humor is worthy of recognition. Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long for us to follow suit.

I would love to hear what other people think about this whole humor issue. Do you agree that it is thought of as one of literature’s second class citizens? How do you think it should it be seen?

The Book that Started It All for Me

Other authors on I.N.K. have mentioned how they started writing books for kids or what children’s books truly inspired them. For me, one book answers both questions. A magazine writer at the time, I picked it up because of its intriguing title: Round Buildings, Square Buildings, and Buildings That Wiggle Like a Fish. (Sorry, I tried to get its cover shown here but messed up.) Philip Isaacson was an architect and wrote the book to explain the elements of architecture, but also to tackle the abstract notion of how and why we perceive beauty.

Frankly, I was blown away. Here was a guy who had clearly thought about this subject for a long time. He had passion and vision—two ingredients that characterize many great nonfiction kids books. And he could convey them both, beautifully.

Let’s go for the acid test, a discussion of the lowest and dullest of building materials—concrete. Isaacson starts by saying that concrete has strength, but can take on soft, flowing shapes. Then, as an example of both, he describes the now defunct Trans World Airlines Terminal at JFK Airport. “The designer of the terminal must have loved air travel, because he gave us a building that looks as though it is sailing through air. Its roof sits on columns that sweep upward and its insides soar toward the heavens. When we enter it we feel that our flight has already begun. Most terminals are the last place on land; this one is our first step into the sky.”

Okay, he can write. But what amazed me just as much as his lyric prose was his ability to explain complex, abstract subjects without dumbing them down a bit. He made us understand them—and feel them.

My reaction? I didn’t know you could write this way for kids!?! I want to try.

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AND NOW A REQUEST TO ANY TEACHERS OR LIBRARIANS who look at this site, or anyone with elementary school aged kids or anyone with access to elementary school teachers or kids…

My new book, See How They Run: Campaign Dreams, Election Schemes, and the Race to the White House, deals with democracy, the electoral process, and ways kids get involved. To help kids start thinking about these issues, I created the KIDS SPEAK OUT! Survey—a quick (12 questions), anonymous, nonpartisan way for them to give their opinions on voting and issues facing our country.

The survey can be accessed via http://www.seehowtheyrunbook.com/ which takes you to my web site where you can click on the Take the Kids Speak Out Survey link on top. Another option is to go directly to my web site: http://www.susangoodmanbooks.com/.

The goal is for students all over the country to participate. My target audience is 3rd to 8th graders, but the more the merrier. Could you look at this survey and, if you feel comfortable, tell students about it? Soon there will be a downloadable teachers guide for the book on the same web site that includes ways teachers can use the survey in their classroom. And other activities to help teach about elections in the fall.

Thanks so much--Susan

A Rose By Any Other Name?

Before I became a kids’ book author, I wrote magazine articles including an interview with Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners. Among other things, I asked her if she had ever been stumped by a question of etiquette. Only one, she replied, finding a good way to refer to the person someone lives with but is not married to. Partner seems like a business relationship. Boyfriend is frankly weird after 30 years of cohabitation or if that “boy” is gray or bald. Lover much the same. POSSLQ or "Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters," a term coined in the late 1970s by the Census Bureau? Please.

As we all know, words matter. So what about the one that describes our genre of writing: nonfiction. I used to feel just fine about it, but now I have a slight twinge. After all, it does have a negative point of reference. The “I’m not fiction” instead of the “I am something” kind of writing. Hmmm.

When I started doing school visits years ago, I heard educators using the term informational writing. Frankly I hate that even more. It sounds like we write instructions for assembling bookshelves. Yes, nonfiction transmits information, but while doing so it can also convey the magic and wonder of the world in words funny or beautiful.

Creative nonfiction, which could accurately describe many of our books? Not horrible, despite the basic “un-fiction” problem mentioned earlier. At least it acknowledges that we use the same arsenal of literary tools as the fiction folks: story, setting, characters, conflict, dialogue (or quotations in our case). And most importantly, imagination. But I’ve learned that creative nonfiction does not refer to the Michael Pollans or Susan Orleans in the adult world and the Jennifer Armstrongs and Elizabeth Partridges in ours. Instead it most often means memoirs, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

So, what are we to do? Ask Miss Manners? Come up with a new word? Ms. made it into our language, although POSSLQ died a warranted death. Or, should we remember 7-Up’s old ad campaign where it celebrated itself as the Uncola—the break from the ordinary, the un and only—and wear the nonfiction name with pride.

TELL ME A STORY

I frequently do a workshop for teachers where I discuss, among other things, different elements good nonfiction may have, including plot or story. To illustrate this particular point, I bring out The Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Joy Cowley and Nic Bishop. Cowley’s book tells young readers where these frogs live, what they do and eat. But, with just 170 words, she also duplicates the structure of War and Peace. Okay, a little hyperbole here, there’s no Russian winter or love interest in this one, but the book does have a strong setting, a gutsy hero with a conflict, a subplot that leads to the climax, resolution of the original conflict, and a denouement.

So I was surprised the first time—and the second and third—when a teacher said he or she hadn’t realized that The Red-Eyed Tree Frog contained a full story.

Kids know this on some level, that’s why they read and reread the book. Humans are social creatures and busybodies; we all love to hear stories. I realized this in a past life, when I was a magazine writer. I’d write an article about, say, the effect of stress on infertility. Naturally I’d quote statistics and experts, but what people remembered were the anecdotes about Jane or Sarah’s experience. Stories are, in large part, how we learn.

Some nonfiction books are obvious stories, from Jennifer Armstrong’s account of Shackleton’s amazing Antarctic expedition, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World to The Great Fire by Jim Murphy. Others are not so obvious. I’m not suggesting that writers should turn every animal into a swashbuckler or start giving thunderbolts a mission. I just know that when I’m writing and confused about how to proceed, I often ask myself, “What’s the story here?” And my answer may unlock the logjam.

A few years ago, I got a dream assignment. The new director of Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida, knew my children’s books and asked me to create new signage for the entire garden. I knew I could write clear, even lyric signs, but I wanted something more compelling. Now, Selby has a big sign at its entrance that explains that plants live their lives differently than we do, but they have the same needs and goals. Then I invited the visitor to come learn (through subsequent signs) about this world whose inhabitants were busy staying healthy, making a living and a family, fighting turf wars with neighbors, outfoxing predators—and, sometimes preying on others themselves. In other words, I made a story.

And a bookish example. My newest comes out in May--
See How They Run: Campaign Dreams, Election Schemes, and the Race to the White House.. In it, I write that we not only should vote, we also have to know enough to make good decisions. But what will kids remember more—that clear, slightly stodgy sentence or the story that follows it and illustrates the same idea, the one that took place in Milton, Washington, when Boston Curtis won an election in 1938. Milton’s mayor had put this totally unknown candidate on the ballot to prove how important it is to know who you are voting for. Boston Curtis was a mule.