GOING AWAY PRESENT

Hello and goodbye everybody—

Thanks for tuning in all this time. As part of my 70^th and final post for I.N.K., I thought you might like to visit a few great folks who made a bow on these pages at one time or another.  And as an extra added bonus, a wondrous going away gift awaits you at the bottom of the page.  It should take you straight to the most high-tech source of nonfiction on Planet Earth, and I promise you'll like it.  So let’s begin with……

100% TRUE FACTOIDS FROM RANDOM BLOG POSTS:

Before he was saved by a bald 10 or 12 year old Indian girl named Pocahontas, Captain John Smith had already won a Turkish fortress by stuffing a bunch of explosives into metal pots and catapulting them into the Turks’ camp while they slept. He was also great at making fireworks, but that didn't keep him from being captured and enslaved by Turks or being kidnapped by pirates.

When the California Gold Rush was in full swing, a single piece of paper cost $150 but you could get 12 shirts washed and ironed at the Chinese Laundry for $3. One time a chicken gizzard panned out at $12.80.

Here's what a couple of guys said on board the sailing ships headed for the gold fields:
“The water is becoming bad. I don’t mind it much. I have a way of killing the bugs before drinking them.” Anonymous

The journey by land wasn't much better: “Hail exceeded anything I ever saw, being as large as pigeon eggs. There may be fun in camping, but we haven’t discovered any.” Elisha Douglass Perkins

During the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Meriwether Lewis wrote that: "the musquetoes continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist; for my own part I am confined to my bier at least 3/4ths of my time. my dog even howls with the torture and we frequently get them in our thr[o]ats as we breath."

Lewis also included a couple of fashion statements showing how the Chinook Indians flattened their infants' heads so much that they measured only 2 inches from front to back and were even thinner at the top. (Head flattening didn't lower the babies' IQ’s one bit....but don't try this at home.) Their moms wanted to look good too. They made their legs fashionably fat by tying cords so tightly around their ankles that the circulation was cut off and their legs swelled right up.

When the American Revolution was heating up, Patrick Henry famously said:
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!—I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Whereupon Samuel Johnson, the greatest English writer of his day, made this response:How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?”

Thomas Jefferson secretly hired a Scottish scandal monger named James Callender to write scurrilous tales about John Adams, so Callender obligingly called Adams a repulsive, hideous, mentally deranged hermaphrodite who wanted to crown himself king.  (Later Callender got so mad at Jefferson that he printed the story of Jefferson’s affair with his slave, Sally Hemings.) 

This time our target audience chimes in….

REAL LIVE KIDS WHO ARE AUTHORS:

In one blog, I mentioned showing a bunch of fourth graders some fun ways to do interviews and write the stories they uncovered. The big idea was to tell how their own families came to America, whether they got here last Wednesday or 300 years ago. All of their stories were wonderful, but here are some excerpts from two funny ones:

“During the first year of medical school, my mom had to dissect a human body.  It was a smelly task and after they were done for the day, they would be smelly too.  Something that she thought was pretty funny was the comments that people would say and the funny faces they would make when they would smell the anatomy students.”

“dad was such a dare devil that he went car surfing with his friends. His friend tried to throw him off!, but my dad was good at staying on.  He only fell off a couple of times! ...my dad thinks cliff jumping is the most fun stunt because he loves the rush of falling through the air!”  (the author included lots more stunts his dad’s mom didn’t know about plus a photo of Christopher Reeve as Superman.)

SOME FAN MAIL REAL LIVE KIDS SENT AFTER SCHOOL VISITS:

I had a good time.  I liked your book.  Thank you for comeing.  I was not here that day I whish I was.

We really like reading your books they are geater then all of the books I’ve readed  Because it is most funny. But it is not geater then pokemon but I still like it. 

The ting I liked best about your books are the pictures.  I was wondering how do you paint your pictures without going out of the lines.

Thank you for letting us talk with you!  Even though I cannot pronounce your name.

I love your books.  I wish I had all of them. Truth is I do nat have any.

I wanted to order one of your books but my dad wouldn’t let me.  Por me I really wanted one.

When I grow up I might make books or be a vet I’m not sure about that yet.

If I were an author I would write about a little girl that was an orfin.  I think that idea I gave you was a good idea.  Write me back if yo use my idea. 

Well, I promise to write you back one way or another, so keep in touch.  But for now, that’s all, folks.  Many thanks to Linda Salzman for putting this blog together, and to all the rest of our amazing authors and readers as well. I've enjoyed meeting you enormously.   And now, HERE'S YOUR PRESENT (just skip the ad). www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhcPX1wVp38www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhcPX1wVp38

Adios muchachos-

Roz 

Puzzling

“How many hours a day do you write?” is one of the most frequent questions I encounter when I speak at schools. That’s a tricky one to answer when you write nonfiction. The truth is, because research is such a major part of the process of creating nonfiction, nonfiction authors may go weeks or months without writing, and yet we’re working all the time. That’s the case for me, at least. My writing months are the treasured few in a given year that follow the sometimes interminable phase of research.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of emptying and solving our family’s wooden tray puzzles. Some were easy. Some were not. I learned as a child which ones I could do quickly and which ones were more difficult. As my puzzling skills improved—and I began to memorize the layout of each puzzle—I took the logical next step to increase the challenge and dumped all the puzzles out together and proceeded to sort the jumble of pieces into their respective frames. That was fun. It took time, but it was so satisfying to turn the chaotic pile of colored wooden shapes into familiar scenes.

I still puzzle: here's my 2012 holiday diversion.

In my teen years, I returned to puzzling, but this time they were the 500-piece cardboard variety. My father and I worked on puzzles recreationally, perhaps with a football game or TV show playing in the background. We loved the work—the incremental progress that could be measured by locking each piece into place, the strategy required to best solve a particular design, the satisfaction of placing the final piece into place.

Many years later, after I became an author, I realized I could not have found a better way to prepare my mind for a life of research and writing. Every project I undertake is a new puzzle. Each fact collected adds an element of understanding to the project. The more I collect, the clearer the picture becomes of what I am trying to create.

The Big Sort--organizing note cards before writing.

But the picture—that’s the one difference between puzzling and authoring. We know exactly what a jigsaw puzzle should look like by the image portrayed on its carton. A book is another matter. Authors start with topics and a basic knowledge of a subject, but the details and nuance that follow add a dimension of creativity to our work that eclipses the jigsaw puzzling experience.

My office--the epicenter of puzzling and writing.

I’m in the puzzling phase of a project right now. Completing the reading. Converting the facts I’ve found into notes. Drawing connections in my mind. Those interconnected steps will empower the words that begin to flow in a few more weeks. I have no doubt that my childhood passion for and practice of puzzling helped to make me the writer I am today. Patient. Persistent. A puzzler.

How many hours a day do I write? Throw in the puzzling and it’s more than a full-time job. On any given day you'll find me, metaphorically at least, spilling the pieces of the project onto the floor to see what picture emerges.

Posted by Ann Bausum

Growing from our Work

At the end of March, I’ll be flying to Michigan to receive the Mitten Award from the Michigan Library Association.  The award is for a book (“Dogs on Duty: Soldiers’ Best Friends on the Battlefield and Beyond”) that does a good job of communicating information to its target audience.  I work hard to achieve that goal, so I feel honored to receive this award.  At the conference I will also be giving a keynote address, which has gotten me thinking: What topic is especially appropriate for a keynote?  This question has been wandering around in my head for a while, and I’ve finally decided on the answer for me, at this time in my career.

A nonfiction writer is a person who loves learning new information and feels the urge to communicate the fascinating information she/he has learned to other people.  We go through the years finding intriguing topics, enjoying our research, and putting it all together in a form we hope will inspire and engross our readers.  We learn a lot, meet all sorts of experts, and probably visit some fascinating locales.  But I realize now that we do so much for ourselves in the process of being dedicated to looking for truth and communicating our knowledge to others.

This work helps make us be more open in a number of ways.  We learn to explore all sides of a topic, to investigate different versions of the “facts,” and to communicate the complexities of “there are no simple answers” to our audience in clear, nonjudgmental language.  I think nonjudgmental is a big part.  Years ago I wrote “Where the Wild Horses Roam,” about wild horses in the West.  There were, and still are, big controversies about these animals.  To some, they are a symbol of wildness, an integral part of the history of the American west that must be honored and protected.  To others, like ranchers who purchase grazing leases on the public lands that house the horses, these equines are not just a damn nuisance, they steal the vital and sometimes sparse food their cattle need to fatten up and provide income for the ranchers.

I did my best to express the concerns of both sides and shrugged.  “If both ranchers and horse advocates hate me after reading this, I’ll know the book is good.”  But I was wrong—both sides appreciated what I wrote because I stated each side of the story accurately and without any evaluative language.  They just wanted to be heard.  I try to keep that lesson in mind whenever I write about a potentially controversial topic.  “Just the facts, ma’am” has become my mantra.

That's just one example of the unexpected bonuses I've received from this work. Now, after more than 40 years in this business, I realize how much of value I’ve learned, not just the facts and theories, the interactions and exceptions, but also the variety of it all—so many cultures, so many ways of seeing the world and of being in the world, so much glorious variety in Nature.  So, as you can imagine, I’m nowhere near finished yet.  I want to continue learning and communicating as I keep finding more and more intriguing stories available for exploration.

Leaf Watching Writer-Style

   It seems as if I blinked and, poof, all the trees around our house instantly went from green to an artist's pallete of yellow, orange, and rusty brown, with dashes of muted red here and there.  And slowly, leaves are falling, making their twirling, spiraling journey to the ground.  Alison hates this time of the year (it marks the end of summer's warm weather and the beginning of winter); I find it calming (I can sit in one of our sunrooms surrounded by pots of flowering plants, coleus and whatever else we can lift and haul indoors and think about stuff.  Yes, I know, I can think about stuff any time of the year, but during this brief transition time I always go back over my writing year to evaluate it and think about future projects).
   Generally, I go over the negative aspects of my writing much more than the positive.  Did I really put in enough time at the computer?  Why did writing the backmatter and locating images for a new project seem to cause me so many problems?  Etc., etc., etc.  I think this is my 'beat yourself up' approach to making future projects better.
   Which does eventually lead to thinking about those future projects (and they are subjected to the same sort of examination -- is the research solid, don't wait so long to get images, oh, and don't write another 350 page manuscript!).  Now the good news is that Alison and I do have two future projects to work on together and she is pushing for a very tight schedule for the one we're about to start (and I agree that we took a little too long to figure out how we were going to work together on our first co-authoring adventure).  But here's the thing; I don't really know what nonfiction I'm going to be writing about on my own in the future.
   I sit there at night in the sunroom, the tiny humidifier chugging along to send out a warm mist, and wonder why no subject has really caught my attention in months that would prompt me to dig in and do some serious research.  I mean, I LOVE doing research.  I keep nosing around for a topic or an individual that I'm going to like enough to still be working on it years from now.  Usually I come across these by reading anything and everything I can get my hands on and stumble onto something that gets my attention.  Not this year.  And I did a great deal of reading this summer, so it wasn't for lack of trying. 
   The good news is that I haven't given up.  I'm still looking and reading.  And hoping -- that something amazing will come drifting into my life like a perfect red maple leaf.  Wish me luck and I'll try to keep you posted.  Meanwhile, enjoy the leaves.                   

FAVORITE BOOKS: NOW AND THEN

This month INK bloggers are discussing favorite books from the past and present. First a present favorite…..

NEW BOOK/RAVE REVIEW

Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction: Stories and advice from a lifetime of writing and editing by Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd. Kidder is one of my favorite authors; writers’ creative processes fascinate me; and learning how writers and editors work together is my version of People magazine. They had me at Good.

Kidder and Todd have a relationship that most writers can only fantasize about. They work together from vague idea through countless drafts to polished manuscript.  Each takes a turn in Good Prose to describe how that works. 

Kidder describes his problems with story, point of view, structure, and more, in his own books -- and his ways out of them. (His Vietnam memoir My Detachment, took him fifteen years to complete.) I noted dozens and dozens of quotes to use for this blog, but there’s too much good stuff to choose even one. Nonfiction writers and fans of Tracy Kidder: READ THIS BOOK!

FROM THE PAST….

Though I was an insatiable reader as a child, I mostly read fiction. The only nonfiction books I remember devouring were the orange-covered biographies, “The Childhood of Famous American Series” from Bobbs-Merrill. Today these would be called historical fiction, with their invented incidents and dialogue.

In the last few years I’ve found two rather shabby volumes at library book sales and I reread them this morning with some trepidation. But I did enjoy them and their striking silhouette illustrations, lo these many decades later. Abe Lincoln: Frontier Boy wasn’t too over-the-top-hagiographic, and Eli Whitney: Boy Mechanic included moral dilemmas, mistakes, and a dogged determination to “find a way.”

Footnote: Bobbs-Merrill is long gone, but after many mergers and buyouts, “The Childhood of Famous American Series” is still published by Simon & Schuster, with new and old titles.

…TO THE PRESENT

Perhaps those orange biographies did leave their mark. In the biographies I write, I try to include as many childhood experiences as possible.  I was lucky with Jeannette Rankin: Political Pioneer, because she gave long interviews to the Women’s Oral History Project at UC Berkeley, telling many stories of her growing-up years. 

I had much less information on Mercy Otis Warren’s girlhood, but I used what I had – her love of learning, reading, and writing – as the narrative arc for Write On Mercy! The Secret Life of Mercy Otis Warren.

A FEW FABULOUS NEW CHILDHOOD BIOGRAPHIES

Picture book biographies are enjoying a Golden Age right now – long may they reign!  Many recent ones show how the child is mother/father to the woman/man.

• Perhaps my favorite is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind  by the boy himself, William Kamkwamba, and Bryan Mealer. This is a contemporary story of an impoverished African boy who curiosity and perseverance brought remarkable achievements. There's a YA version as well.

• Deborah Heligman: The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos. Words, numbers, and illustrations unite to tell a remarkable story.

• Deborah Hopkinson’s A Boy Called Dickens. The author invites us to follow her through the streets of London looking for little Charles. 

• Patrick McDonnell, Me…Jane. A brilliant example of the genre, for very young children. 

• Tanya Lee Stone: Who Says Women Can’t be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell  and Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote. Stone draws readers into the stories by asking  “What would you do?.... Who says?

ONE MORE FAVORITE

A few months ago I confessed my love of the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] on this blog. And so I was glued to my headphones this summer listening to David Crystal read his recent book, The Story of English in 100 Words. 

Much more than a traditional Latin-Saxon-Danish-Norman story of English, Crystal uses individual words (100 of them,) to dissect the influence of empire, social class, dialects, spelling, literature, technology, pop culture, etc. etc. etc. on our endlessly evolving language. Go forth, dear writers, and use it with panache!*

*OED: 1. A tuft or plume of feathers, esp. for a headdress or as a decoration for a helmet, hat, or cap.

2. fig. Flamboyant confidence of style or manner; dashing display; swagger 

HOW TO WRITE NONFICTION BOOKS THAT CAN’T BE BEAT

By the time I wrote the following post 13 months ago, nonfiction authors and nonfiction readers were getting a lucky break.  Check it out and then go have yourselves an outstanding summer that might even include some great reading and writing....
_________________________________________________

 Who woulda thunk it?  Nonfiction is on a roll!  And it’s largely because of a big game-changer called the Common Core State Standards. What in the world is that?  Well, it’s an educational initiative that has already been adopted by every public school in 45 of these United States and in 3 territories to boot.  In my humble but admittedly prejudiced opinion, the best part is this:  The Common Core requires that by senior year in high school, 70% of the books students read throughout their entire curriculum have to be nonfiction.  Hoo-hah!!  Ladies and gentlemen, it is about time.

And there’s more.  Instead of writing dreary papers that imitate the facts kids have to learn for testing purposes, they are now being encouraged to write some truly interesting and thoughtful nonfiction literature of their own.  Here’s just one small example.  To tempt the Youth of America to dip their toes into nonfiction waters, the New York Times is holding its Third Annual Summer Reading Contest, in which young people aged 13 to 25 are invited to submit blog posts for possible inclusion on the Times’ educational site.  Check out last year’s winning post by Elisabeth Rosenthal and tell me this isn’t a great idea.  Here ‘tis: “Answer for Invasive Species: Put It on a Plate and Eat It”

But what if students like Elisabeth get psyched by reading some truly outstanding nonfiction (insert brazen hint about INK books here).  And what if they get enough of a kick out of writing brief nonfiction pieces that they want to write an entire book of amazing-but-true tales?  Or come to think of it, what if you want to write a nonfiction book your own self? 

I recently helped a couple of fourth grade classes at Bogert Elementary School in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, to do just that.  The challenge was to take certain bland basic material from the school’s curriculum and let the kids work together to write and illustrate an exciting (and accurate) page turner that they would actually love to read themselves.  The kids came through like champs and had a blast. And in the process, they soaked up the material in their curriculum like a sponge.

Of course there’s more than one way to skin a cat.  But maybe I can entice somebody out there to walk down the author path by offering a few small tricks of my own for writing nonfiction books that (I hope) can’t be beat. 

1) PAIR YOUR TOPIC WITH A GREAT HOOK 

Whether you pick a topic that you’d love to know more about, or whether a teacher has assigned your kids to write about dry subjects from the school curriculum, any budding authors out there should try hard to write stories that fascinate.  How? One way is to find a great hook!  I write about history, and here are just a few of the hooks I’ve used ever since time immemorial for readers in different age groups:

• Drawing colorful, complex picture mazes in which readers have to wend their way through the accurate but amazing scenery of America’s Wild West, say, or Europe’s Middle Ages in order to reach the next pages in the story.  
•  Telling true tales from two completely opposite points of view.  
•  Picking a genuine hero from the past and telling his story via his 13 great escapes from danger.  

2) BECOME A SPY

Everything in a nonfiction book has to be 100% true, and you can never ever put your own words into other peoples’ mouths either.  So to find the facts and to figure out what really happened and what people really said, you have to do tons of research.  That's when you get to become a spy!  Snoop around till you can quote from the original letters, diaries, speeches, and journals of your protagonists!  Bravely interview people who were on the scene during a terrifying event!  Or rustle your way through dusty ancient tomes written by responsible scholars until you uncover hidden clues. 

 

3) USE THE MEAT AND SALT METHOD

“Meat” equals the facts.  Make sure you have them down pat. “Salt” equals a tasty sprinkling of all the humor, interesting tidbits, unusual facts, and clever or creative ideas you can lay your hands on in order to bring your book to life.  I love the salt part.

4) WRITE A PAGE TURNER

Every single sentence you write has to be carefully crafted so that your readers can’t wait to see what happens next. Read what you wrote out loud to find out. Does it sound compelling enough? You may be surprised.

5) ADD PICTURES PLEASE

Everyone loves pictures, even grownups.  It doesn’t matter if you can't draw your own cartoons in a graphic novel.  Try adding a bunch of your best photos from your cell phone or create very some clever, colorful graphs with fancy lettering on a computer instead. Or if you have the chops, make Like Michelangelo. In other words, just add your best pictures to the mix and more people will be likely to read your book. 

And speaking of reading, read and READ and READ the best nonfiction books you can lay hands on.  Then pick your faves and try to figure out what it was about the authors’ writing styles that clicked inside of your brain.  That’s it.

6 comments:

Melissa Stewart said...

These are great tips, Roz. I especially like your term "salt and meat method." I might steal, er, I mean borrow it.

June 5, 2012 at 7:26 AM 

 

Linda Zajac said...

Wow, I didn't realize the numbers were as high as 70% NF reading overall. That's supreme! Thanks for spelling it out and making my day.

June 5, 2012 at 8:37 AM 

 

creatingcuriouskids said...

What a wonderful post. I like the "salt" part too. There are so many ways to tell a story, and when I hit on the right one, it's a major rush.

June 5, 2012 at 9:19 AM 

 

Jim Murphy said...

Great post, Roz. I learned a lot and was inspired. But where are the recipes for these invasive species?

June 5, 2012 at 10:00 AM 

 

Unknown said...

It's wonderful getting inside a creative mind--even just scratching the surface. Thanks for the tips.
Ellen Butts

June 5, 2012 at 6:58 PM 

 

Rosalyn Schanzer said...

Thanks, everybody! And Jim, I dunno about the invasive lionfish in that award-winning blog, but there's a huge ugly invasive fish species from China called the snakehead that's taking over the waters near DC, so they recently had a contest to see who could catch the biggest one. This sharp-toothed fish is a delicacy in China, so chefs around these parts are coming up with all kinds of creative ways to cook it; you can even Google the recipes!

Keeping the Faith

When you're working on a biography, what can you do when facts are sparse about an aspect or a period of your subject’s life? Deborah Heiligman, Susan Kuklin, and I hoped for some answers to this question when we attended a panel called "Dealing with Black Holes in Your Narrative" at the Compleat Biographer’s Conference a few weeks ago in New York. Deb shared some helpful nuggets from this panel in her latest INK column. (Thanks, Deb!)

I keep thinking about what one of the panelists, an award-winning and esteemed biographer, said he won’t do in such a case. He won’t speculate on what someone was thinking or feeling or doing. He eschews phrases such as “may have” or “could have” or “must have felt.” He abstains from “perhaps” and “maybe.” He believes these expressions can reduce a book’s credibility and energy level.

An audience member asked this panelist whether he thought it was ever OK to use them. Surely the spare, occasional use of "she may have thought..." or "perhaps he felt..."—set against a background of facts, of course—was acceptable? she asked hopefully. No, never, not to him. He replied that even this can undermine a reader's faith in a book. Panelist 2 agreed with him. Case closed.

Except that it wasn't. Panelist 3, who is also an award-winning and esteemed biographer, eventually piped up. She pointed out that a writer is, after all, an interpreter of a subject’s life. As long as the facts are firm, she said, then in her view it’s fine for the biographer to wonder occasionally about a person's feelings or thoughts. You can present the evidence you have, she said, and leave it as a question.

Several audience members nodded in agreement with her. I was one of them. But I recently saw a reader review of Master George's People on amazon.com that made me reexamine my position. The reviewer faulted the book for what she called "no-source opinion statements, like 'the enslaved people no doubt saw the matter differently' and 'they felt.'" I know for sure what I felt when I read this criticism, and it was a brief moment of panic. Panelist number 1's words echoed in my head. My word choice had undermined at least one reader's faith in my book.

But then I reminded myself that I would not have taken an unfounded, no-source leap. I grabbed the book and turned to the example the reviewer quoted. It's from chapter 4, "Resistance and Control." Here's the complete paragraph:

     Most of all Washington deplored the "spirit of thieving and housebreaking...among my people." He believed he fed, clothed, and housed his "people" as well as or better than any other slave owner in the region. As far as he was concerned, they were entitled to nothing more. From the slaves' point of view, however, what they were given by their master was totally inadequate. So they took it upon themselves to make up the difference. Meat disappeared from the meat house and corn vanished from the corn loft, as did cherries from the orchards and nails from construction sites. "I cannot conceive how it is possible that 6000 twelve penny nails could be used in the corn house at River Plantation," Washington fumed. To him, these were acts of theft, pure and simple. Mount Vernon's enslaved people no doubt saw the matter differently. They felt they had earned a share of the goods their labor had produced."

I went back to my annotated copy of the manuscript to check my source notes. To my surprise, the paragraph ended with "...Washington fumed." The last 3 sentences weren't there. Then I realized I must have added them later, at the suggestion of one of the two historians who vetted the manuscript for me. (One is a research historian at Mount Vernon who specializes in slave life, the other, a university professor, is a leading authority on African American colonial history.) I searched through my correspondence, and sure enough, I came across a note from one of them saying that I needed to add something about how the slaves felt about helping themselves to the fruits of their labor. Leaving the last word with Washington left the story one-sided. The other historian agreed.

As far as we know, Washington's slaves left no written accounts. Very few of them could read or write. So it's true that we can't know exactly how they felt about their activities. But there are primary sources revealing how enslaved African Americans on other plantations viewed taking things, food in particular, from their owner, and a common theme was that "the result of labor belongs of right to the laborer."

My framework of facts was firm, so I feel very comfortable with my decision to suggest how Washington's slaves would have felt about snatching chickens or sneaking cherries, to indicate that these activities did not compromise their moral code. Indeed, I think I would have been negligent not to have done so, unfaithful to those whose story I'm telling.

Should biographers absolutely stay away from speculating about a subject's thoughts and feelings? Or is it acceptable to suggest occasionally how a subject might have felt or thought, as long as this is set against a strong background of facts? I'd love to know what other writers and readers think about this.

WHAT KIDS CAN DO

This weekend I got a truly amazing package in the mail. It was jam-packed with 20 stories written by third graders, and they weren’t just any old stories either. Each one was eye-popping, unique, full of surprises, AND 100% TRUE; in short, the type of tales kids can hold onto for the rest of their lives.  So what’s the story behind these stories?

Back in the end of March, I did a live video conference with these budding authors via a Library of Congress grant.  Designed to get kids excited about using primary source material, the grant is linked directly to the CCSS.

 

As an example of the incredible stories you can uncover by exploring such sources, we had a wonderful time exploring the action-packed journals of Lewis and Clark from one of my books and also figuring out what other primary source material I used to make the pictures as accurate (and as much fun) as possible.

After that, we discussed several cool ways kids can write their own nonfiction stories by using primary sources, and one of my suggestions was for each kid to interview an older member of their family about their own adventures a long time ago.  We talked about methods news reporters use to ask hard questions, not just easy ones. (I said that their families would love to be interviewed this way.)  And I introduced them to my infamous “meat and salt” method of writing non-fiction, in which the meat = the facts (names, dates, places, etc.) and the salt = all the unusual or surprising or funny big and little things that bring a story to life and make you want to read more.

These are some very lucky kids.  They happen to have an outstanding Pennsylvania teacher named Amy Musone, and after our talk, she decided that the family interviews were worth pursuing.  With Skype support from Sue Sheffer, a retired teacher working with Amy and her class via a grant from the Library of Congress, the kids got on a roll and started brainstorming.  They decided which family members they wanted to interview and why, and each student focused on a particular time in that person’s life.

The results knocked everyone’s socks off, including Amy’s. So at the end of May, their school held a big after-school Celebration of Family Stories, replete with refreshments no less.  Family members from all over came to hear the students read their tales, and they laughed, cried and were simply captivated.  

Every story is compelling, to say the least. There are tales about bombing Nagasaki, playing the ancient game of Pac Man, taking knitting classes in Ecuadorian schools, blowing up an abandoned building with a tank, scrubbing floors in Marine barracks with a toothbrush and saluting every time you wanted a drink of water, and what life is like without technology.   It’s impossible to know which story to put first, but here are a few tiny abridged excerpts written by third graders in their own words—mere hints about the whole shebang.  Check 'em out:

                  ADVENTURES

“dad was such a dare devil that he went car surfing with his friends. His friend tried to throw him off!, but my dad was good at staying on.  He only fell off a couple of times! ...my dad thinks cliff jumping is the most fun stunt because he loves the rush of falling through the air!”  (the author includes lots more stunts his dad’s mom didn’t know about plus a photo of Christopher Reeve as Superman.)

“My brave, amazing Uncle was in the Army….he and his team had to go through this confidence course….there was a building that was 40’ tall and they had to repel down the building.  The 40’ tall building would sway.  My Uncle said this was the most scariest time for him in the Army….[now] My Uncle is looking forward to becoming a Fire Chief. [He] is a wonderful Uncle because he risks hi life for others and everyday helps somebody that needs help.”

         SOME COOL GROSS STUFF

“During the first year of medical school, my mom had to dissect a human body.  It was a smelly task and after they were done for the day, they would be smelly too.  Something that she thought was pretty funny was the comments that people would say and the funny faces they would make when they would smell the anatomy students.”

            AND LOTS OF HISTORY

“When my Great Grandma was a little girl…she felt sad because when a white person threw a rock at a black person, a black person couldn’t throw a rock back…..She went to the March on Washington in 1963. The Civil Rights Leaders talked about how it wasn’t right how African Americans were being treated.  In the South, police had dogs bite African Americans….” 

“There was the time in China when all people no matter you are men, women, or kids, would wear blue shirts and pants. My dad was born during this time in 1978 with no brothers or sisters…..at that time there were not much toys so they would go out and play in the nature.  My dad and his friend would catch tadpoles and watch them grow up…They…would feed their tadpoles leftover rice….He didn’t have any black and white TV until he was 10.  He had his first small single door refrigerator at 12 years old.” 

“Back in the year 1904, the war between Russia and Japan began.  In addition my great great great grandpa was born.  Even though he lived in Russia he didn’t like it very much.  There was a massive war going on.  This meant that once he was old enough, he would be forced to be in the Russian army…It was then that he decided to save enough money to buy a ticket and move to the United States…..” (and his further adventures once he arrived) “I hope that one day I will follow in the footsteps of my great great great grandpa and be as courageous as [he] was (except that I’d like to play football too)."

“My grandma just turned 79 years old. Abuela used to sow tobacco plants on the farm she grew up on….Abuela’s ancestors are a mix of African slaves, Spaniards from Spain and Taino Indians, the first inhabitants of Puerto Rico. Abuela’s education lasted only until the 4^th grade because Abuela had to work on the farm... They traveled on horseback…and there was no technology….it was a beautiful place, surrounded by palm trees, mountainsides and the songs of frogs.” And this:  “Back when my grandma was a child all she was allowed to wear were dresses and skirts, no pants or shorts which sounds TERRIBLE to me.”

You gotta love these kids (and their school too), right? Now every one of them is an author, a researcher, an historian, and an open-minded, creative thinker who's learning to use his or her noggin to uncover the facts.