It's all about "me"

Why have so many people stopped using "me" after prepositions? Instead they say, "This is just right for you and I," or "Ted went to the game with Tony and I." Friends do it, family members do it, TV news anchors do it, I've even heard an NPR reporter do it. OK, she was reporting from a battleground, so I'll cut her a break for stress, but still...

What's wrong with "me?" Could it be that some "I" misusers think "me" sounds babyish? "Me want cookies now!" Or maybe "I" seems more educated, more elegant, more formal than "me." "Me" certainly feels more sensual in the mouth. You have to press your lips together to produce the "m" sound, the vibration that begins a moan or a moo. "I" is unsullied by such an earthy consonant.

I bet the "I" crowd never had to memorize the 48 prepositions in alphabetical order and be ready for a pop quiz on them every single week, as I was required to do in 8th grade English. If they had, they'd think twice before using a subjective pronoun after a preposition.

But I'm guessing the main reason so many people say "for you and I" instead of "for you and me" is because the usage has become so common. You hear it all the time. My theory--which is probably not original although I can't recall reading about it before--is that Jim Morrison and The Doors share the blame for this. In 1968, they released a single called "Touch Me" that reached #3 on Billboard Hot 100 and has been playing on oldies stations every since. You must have heard it. Here's the refrain:

I'm gonna love you
Till the heavens stop the rain
I'm gonna love you
Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I.

The rhythm slows for the first three lines, which are sung gently, sweetly. Then the tempo starts to pick up and at the crescendo Morrison punches out "FOR YOU AND I!" Yeah, yeah, I know Morrison did it for the rhyme and that there are no grammar rules in rock and roll. And I think it's a great song. I'm just fascinated by the power of music, and by the idea that maybe the emphatic "FOR YOU AND I," heard over and over again on oldies stations, became so embedded in our brains that the usage spread like a virus. Personally, I hope we find a cure for this virus. I think the cure might have to do with memorizing prepositions and diagramming sentences.

What does this have to do with nonfiction for kids? For one thing, it reminds me of what Jim Murphy discussed in his blog yesterday. Faulty "facts"--like faulty grammar--can take hold through sheer repetition.

As for the poor old pronoun "me," I can't feel too sorry for it, since it appears to have usurped "I" as a subject. Me and my kids can tell you all about it.

Battle Cry Freedom

Last month I chatted about Marc Aronson's "New Knowledge" article which appears in the latest issue of The Horn Book (http://www.hbook.com/magazine/current.asp). It wasn't that I disputed his definition of New Nonfiction -- that it involves original research and new discoveries and sometimes leads to speculation on the subject that goes beyond the established, accepted opinions. I simply wanted to point out that this wasn't particularly new, that some folk had been doing this for many years, and that what was being labeled as new was in fact the result of a gradual evolution.*

*

Marc responded in his School Library Journal blog, Nonfiction Matters (http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/nonfictionmatters/2011/03/page/2/), with a long and thoughtful explanation, then followed this with two additional posts that, among other things, further defined and defended New Knowledge. The posts are all worth reading and thinking about, as are the responses and Marc's replies to them. I understand, too, that Russell Freedman has more to add to the discussion that will appear in the next issue of Horn Book.*

*

Here's the weird thing. Every time I read Marc's posts, the title of James McPherson's twenty-three year old book Battle Cry of Freedom popped into my head. Marc's entries certainly were a battle cry for speculative nonfiction as a force to lead us into the future. But I kept sensing that more might be going on here, that the freedom part of my memory response was vital. Then it came to me. Now I may be reaching here, reading too much into the passion of Marc's writing, and I apologize in advance if that's the case. I just had a feeling that at heart this was a plea to be taken seriously by the world beyond children's books, that Marc wanted his books and those of other New Knowledge practicioners to be seen as equal to and as worthy of serious discussion and respect as any adult nonfiction book. That he wants to break the chains that enslave us as "children's book" writers.*

*

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this desire. We've all had those awkward and annoying moments when someone (well-meaning but clueless about how we actually put our books together) has asked when we'll write a real grown-up book; we've patiently tried to explain our research methods, the care that we take to develop themes, how we sweat bullets over the text -- but really we just want to scream. Or at least not have to always justify our craft.*

*

And let's face it, being a part of the New Knowledge (New Nonfiction, Passionate Nonfiction, Speculative Nonfiction, or as Tanya Lee Stones says, "whatever we finally end up calling it") movement has appeal. There is a certain exhilartion and positive energy charge in announcing a new finding or interpretation, to being unique or the first to have a major scoop. My problem is that in the enthusiasm of the moment, some painful and damaging mistakes can be made. Take the case of Archaeoraptor Lianoningensis. *

*

In October, 1999, National Geographic made a monumental announcement, followed by a prominent article in their magazine. They had the fossil remains of Archaeoraptor Lianoningensis, a chicken-sized dinosaur that presumably lived from 125 million to 140 million years ago that, National Geographic claimed, was the "missing link between terrestrial dinosaurs and birds." Only it wasn't. It was an artfully glued together assembly of random fossils made by a Chinese farmer. The fraud was quickly exposed (in fact, several individuals had actually expressed doubts about the fossil months before the announcement), so the damage was limited to severly bruised reputations and the 80 grand paid out for the fake.*

*

My point is that despite numerous impressive degrees and many years of scientific study, the experts at National Geographic allowed themselves to be duped. And why? Because, despite knowing about the reservations of others in the field, they were in a rush to publish their find, to be the first out with this amazing discovery. We know this because they refused to give a peer-reviewed journal adequate time to publish and gather responses from other experts. *

*

My point isn't that original research, new discoveries, and speculation aren't important, good things. Nor do I want to imply that Marc or any of the authors he mentions in his article would recklessly publish anything they knew to be false or misleading. But, sadly, I think there are writers out there -- plenty of them -- who would. While visiting the Horn Book site to read Marc's article, you might also want to read Tanya Lee Stone's article, "A Fine, Fine Line: Truth in Nonfiction," where she rants (in the best possible way) against the use of invented dialogue and other made-up stuff in books that are passed off as nonfiction. I do not know what books Tanya was specifically talking about, but clearly the authors were comfortable with this sort of fraud, as were their editors and publishers. And while I might once again be reading too much into Tanya's words, I get the feeling that one or more of these books may have received strong reviews and might have even been considered for various awards and lists. In other words, some of the gatekeepers -- those professionals who stand between a book and its target audience -- had failed to do a good job.*

*

Which brings us to the most important element of the discussion: our readers -- kids of varying ages and depths of learning and sophistication, who read (sometimes reluctantly, sometimes happily) and absorb the printed word as gospel. When a rogue book gets out (whether it's a willful act to grab attention or build drama in a text or an honest attempt to re-interpret the historical record) who is going to pick up the pieces? Is it fair to expect librarians and teachers to constantly patrol and explain these problem texts to scores of young readers? And in case you think any errors might be minor in nature, please remember that recent Virginia textbook where the author informed young readers that thousands of slaves happily signed on to defend the south and its traditions during the Civil War. That text (and its historical implications) was floating around in schools for weeks and months before the error was caught and the books recalled. There's no reason to assume something just as egregious couldn't happen in trade books. *

*

So I guess my take on the New Nonfiction is that it's a welcome and challenging change, but one that needs to be approached with a degree of old-fashion caution, that instead of a revolutionary charge into the future, we need to take careful, evolutionary steps forward.

Agents--Agents of Change?

I’m in the market for a new agent, a slightly bizarre experience for so many reasons. It feels a bit like picking your marriage partner from one of those speed dating sessions where you talk to someone for eight minutes and then shift to the left. Of course, if you hook up with an agent and it doesn’t work out, breaking up isn’t as bad as a real divorce. You do end up sharing custody, though. At least until your joint children go out of print.

So I called friends for suggestions and reviews of agents they know. Then began studying up online. I’d read through an agent’s client list, past triumphs, future wants. I’ve found several candidates I want to pursue, but a surprising number of times, a disturbing number of times, I came upon one of the following phrases:

--Submit middle-grade or YA fiction only
--Submissions of picture books are not welcome at this time
--Our current policy on picturebooks is that we do not solicit either texts or illustrators, but do represent picturebooks by authors whom we have already taken on for their older, longer work. Additionally, we are not looking for non-fiction.
--No nonfiction or poetry collections.

I don’t want to hyperbolic -- but I’m reminded of signs saying “Jews and Irish need not apply” and “Colored waiting room around back.”

I’m not entirely surprised. We all know that the books are a strange alliance of art and commerce and, lately, commerce rules the day. We also have a bit of a population trough in the picture book age group, schools and libraries are budget poor, picture books are expensive to produce in paper form and the technology to sell them as E-books is just enough behind their novel format cousins that it further suppresses the market. Nonfiction books, many of them picture books, can have the same problems. And don’t get me started about the backward notion some parents have about starting their kids on chapter books asap so they can get into Harvard.

I’m not really blaming these agents either. Some of them may have never had any interest in these genres. Fair enough. YA fiction is hot and everyone needs to make a living, and wants a good one at that. Also fair. But here’s my two cents to anyone listening.

*Trends change, populations ebb and flow. It pays to stay flexible.

*There will always be younger kids in greater and fewer numbers. There will always be schools and libraries. There will always be the need to learn about the world and everything in it. It pays to stay flexible. Furthermore, for agents and publishers who can attract quality voices to nonfiction to turn their backs upon it is a disservice not only to children but to our society as a whole.

*When technology changes, its costs tumble, then it will be our turn to shine. Affordable picture e-books will be widely seen in their full double-page spread glory. Nonfiction changes will be stratospheric with books about butterflies clicking onto caterpillars timelapsing quickly into monarchs and a bio of Martin Luther King building up to the “I Have a Dream” speech. Ah, the cyber-sidebars and back matter. And the possibility of a 39 Clues-type book with mysteries that teach kids who are reading/playing them everything from history to forensic science. Hence, it pays to stay flexible

*Many agents wrote on their wish list that they were looking for someone who will reinvent their genre. Well, that doesn’t just happen in dystopian fiction. Vision and innovation can be anywhere—and, when it happens, the market responds. Look at Shaun Tan or ABC3D by Marion Bataille. And so, it pays to stay flexible.

*The market also responds when anyone talented has a great take on a great idea—in any genre.

Guess what? It pays to stay flexible.

Travelblog: A School Visit, Moroccan Style

We all know that an author should never say yes to a school visit without first knowing the terms. But last summer Cynthia Ruptic, the lower school librarian at the Rabat American School [RAS] emailed me. “Come to Rabat for two weeks. We’ll have a great time.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Usually these international trips last a week, at least that’s what I’ve been told as I had never done one before. But Cynthia and the upper school librarian, Lora Wagner, thought that since

I write for children and young adults, and since I’m a writer and photographer, two weeks would be a better fit. Two weeks in Morocco? How could I resist.

That was last summer. As the time for my visit neared, North Africa exploded in a sea of Facebook revolution. My good friend, Liz Levy, was trapped in Egypt along with Bruce Coville and his wife. Trouble in country after country inched closer to the border of Morocco, and the conflicts grew more violent. Was this the right time to talk about nonfiction and photography. Would the students concentrate on anything other than what was happening on their continent? Was it safe? The school principal, Kathy Morabet, emailed, “Come! Morocco is peaceful.”

(Lora and Cynthia)

And so ….
My two weeks in Rabat were intense and wonderful. Before I left, though, Cynthia emailed a program that freaked me out by its Cecil B. DeMille, Technicolor-coded complexity. There was a two-page spreadsheet, chock-a-block filled with classes, photography workshops, after-school club meetings, auditorium presentations, and a teacher presentation. Class visits were from Pre K to 10th Grade. I immediately came down with a sore throat that lasted until I arrived.

In addition, Cynthia and Lora set up a series of half hour meetings with each teacher before I was to meet their class. Yikes! When would there be time to do all that? Those meetings turned out to be a godsend. They gave me the sense of what the teachers were doing and how my prepared programs could be adapted to reinforce their teaching. Class projects ranged from growing silk worms in a shoebox to scribes in Ancient Egypt. Science, math, and ancient history are not exactly a clear fit with my work as a contemporary nonfiction author. And yet, when we put our heads together we found ways to bridge the gap.

So when Alice Mendoza’s kindergarten class went to work on the RAS Storypath Park, the students photographed the tops of the school’s palm trees and attached prints to clay models that represented the trunks.

(Photo by Alice Mendoza.)

Before Judi Meddoun and Nigel Barker took their third graders to a bridge under construction, we did another photo workshop dealing with lines, curves, colors, and textures.

(Photographing texture)

Then there was another session to select photos for an essay to be completed after I was gone. The teachers are currently turning these projects into photo essays with text.

Carlos Lindbloom’s six graders had to choose an ancient Egyptian character, e.g., a scribe, a stonecutter, etc., research it, and be prepared to answer questions in character. Lora filled a large table of books about ancient Egypt. We did a session on the interview techniques and ferretting out primary sources. And our own Deborah Heiligman’s tip to research and then hide your secondary sources, as a way to force you to write in your own words, was a big hit. Thanks for that, Deb.

Much of time in the upper school was devoted to discussions about the process of researching and making books, especially No Choirboy and Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery. One class read a fiction version about Iqbal. When they compared them, INKers will be happy to know, they preferred the nonfiction. An upper school advanced art class read parts of No Choirboy and was asked to create a piece of art portraying their opinion, pro or con, about capital punishment. The half-finished works ranged from abstract black-white-silver boxes to intricate ink drawings. One girl was stuck: “What if I have doubt?” “Draw doubt!” The lower school seemed to fall in love with Jamie, an eight-year-old dwarf in Thinking Big, and Nim Chimpsky, The Chimpanzee Who Learned Language. These books were read and discussed in the library while I talked about more current books in the classroom.

The bridge also made my number one priority, “research is fun, the deeper the research, the more fun,” tangible to their own work. My number two priority, that “drafts are a good thing,” remained a somewhat dubious concept, but, hey, you can’t win them all in only two weeks.

Contemporary nonfiction became all too appropriate when the revolution in Libya took a turn for the worse. Nights, we watched French television. Days, some of the high school students marked the events with poems and guitar dirges.

I wasn’t going to take this on, but I feel that I must. Having experienced the incredible warmth of Muslim hospitality, I’m appalled at the way this large, diverse group is portrayed by American media and some fundamentalists. It’s time we stop this nonsense of stereotyping to the lowest common dominator.

While horrendous acts of violence looped across the TV, striking acts of kindness appeared in real time. Two American teachers took my husband and me to a seaside lunch with their Moroccan friends. The restaurant was crowded so we moved a table onto the beach. At one point a little girl approached saying that she was hungry. One of the men at the table brought over another chair, sat her down, peeled the bones from his fish, and fed her.

The assistant librarian in the lower school arrived each morning wearing beautiful scarves and jalabas. One day I asked where she bought her lovely jalaba. [Always think shopping] Her mother-in-law made it. On my last day at the school, Stephanie, her husband, and children showed up with a going away gift. I’m wearing Stephanie’s mother-in-law’s jalaba as I write this blog.

There was time for fun, too, such as dinners, parties, and a teacher outing to the Chellah, a fort built in 1339, for a photo shoot at sunset.

(The Challah)

And there was an extraordinary weekend in Fez - with a stop in Meknes and Volubilis - with Kathy and Ahmed Morabet.

(The Tanneries of Fez)

Back to business:

Lora, the upper school librarian, attended all my upper school classes. She took notes and photos so that she could do follow-ups after I left. The music teacher wrote a song about nonfiction that the children sang in the auditorium. It took my breath away. I felt like a rock star. Now I know why Mick Jagger doesn’t retire.

The last day of classes, I met Cynthia in the library. We were going to a closing program in the auditorium. She had a large box of tissues in hand. “We’re going to need this,” she said. Stephanie pulled out another box. “You had better take two!” She was right. It was hard to say goodbye.

شكرا لك RAS!

PS: I can't end this blog without mentioning the two families who hosted me: Kathy and Ahmed Morabet; Lora Wagner and Majid El Ghaib, and their daughter, Alia. They made me part of their families and I can't thank them enough.

Who Are Exemplars of Twenty-First Century Skills?

Twentieth century education arose at the time of the industrial revolution. Its purpose was to produce workers for factories—people who could read and write, who got along well with others, and who could follow directions. This short video sums it up quite well.

But times have changed and the skills of the twentieth century, which education met most effectively in the 1950s, are still being taught for the most part in the old-fashioned way. It doesn’t work. Recently, I’ve been attending education conferences where many innovators speak about the skills we’ll need for the twenty-first century. Computer literacy is, of course, a given. But that alone won’t solve the problems. Much of what I heard at these conferences as new is a simply a throw-back to the progressive education I was fortunate to receive as a child. (The new buzz word is “project-based learning” or pbl.) But one noted and impressive educator I’ve come across in my travels, who truly speaks to the future, is Alan November. Here is another short video in which he lays out what he thinks are the three essential skills kids will need to thrive in the twenty-first century.

If you don’t have the time or interest to watch the video, here’s my take on his three skills. First, people will have to know how to process massive amounts of information. This means they have to be able to read critically, pick out the stuff that fits with the problem they have to solve, and synthesize the material into something that has added value for the marketplace they are connected with.

Second, November thinks that people have to be able to work globally—to find people on the planet, not just in their neighborhood, state or even country, who can help them to solve problems.

Third, November believes that the most valuable workers of the future have to be self-directed. They will be able to work without needing a boss. This means that they must be creative enough to figure out what needs to be done and disciplined enough to do the work without having someone looking over their shoulder. (It’s cheaper to hire workers who don’t need managers.)

So now, here’s my question: Who are exemplars of workers who already have these skills? Who are models of disciplined, self-starters, on-going life-long learners, who process massive amounts of information, including material gathered from all over the world, and produce works with added value? Can you guess who they are? (I’m prolonging this, trying to approximate a drum-roll.) It’s (are you ready?) CHILDREN’S NONFICTION AUTHORS!!!!

We each do extensive research; we travel (and email and Skype) the world; and, god knows, we don’t have a regular paycheck so we’ve got to be self-starters. In addition to the knowledge we’ve accrued via the books we write, we can talk from first-hand experience about the acquisition of the subset of skills needed for each of the three overall 21^st century skills as stated by Alan November. We can speak about how to locate pertinent information, how to select the most appropriate, how to double-check its accuracy, how to honor our sources, etc. Most of us have traveled to other parts of the world in pursuit of what interests us. What skills are involved in working globally with people of different cultures and values? (We can speak to that.) And as to the last skill, the idiosyncratic ways we have each learned in order to trick (manipulate? cajole? threaten?) ourselves into working productively, that could absolutely fill volumes. It’s so a highly individualized that I venture we each have something different to say about it. At the very least, we can affirm that work is not relegated to a traditional 9-to-5 workday.

Want to know how we do it? Start asking.

And to help you ask we’re launching something new:

Ink Link: Authors on Call invites you to join us for a series of COMPUTERSIDE CHATS—informal panel discussions via videoconferencing,starting on May 10. This adventure in technology will allow authors and educators to discuss the exciting role that nonfiction literature can play in bringing the joy of learning to your classroom. The videoconferences will be FREE, compliments of our partner SetFocus, which has given us a “virtual room” for our chats. Participants can ask questions via a written chat (#authorsoncall) , and the conversation will continue on our wiki. The room can hold about forty separate endpoints, which might include anything from individual computers to a room of people with a projector. Together we can create an intimate meeting without the costs or inconvenience of travel. Since space is limited, reservations will be granted via applications ala TED conferences where you can add your own witty comment in answer to our provocative question. If you'd like to join our emailing list, please let me know at: Vicki@inkthinktank.com

Our inaugural INK Link Computerside Chat on May 10 at 7 PM EDT will feature author David Schwartz, literacy expert Angela Maiers, and moi, Vicki Cobb called: Passionate Voices: Science, Math, and 21st Century Skills

QUOTES

In days of yore, people wrote volumes of long newsy letters to far-off friends and loved ones, and these missives might travel for many moons and endure a series of perilous journeys by land and sea before ever reaching a recipient. So it's no surprise that letters tended to be treasured and saved by their readers.

It was also common practice in some circles to pen daily journals, transcribe trial testimonies and political debates, dream up scandalous pamphlets and outrageous slogans, or write out speeches on onion skin paper or on the backs of envelopes. Naturally, these items were stored away as well. And it’s a good thing for me that so many have survived, because whenever I write about history, they turn out to be the most colorful and entertaining and revealing sources I use. So today I thought it might be fun to serve up a few short outtakes showing how people dealt with some troublesome matters.

Take the gold miners during the California Gold Rush, for example. They were a bunch of jokers.


“I hate to desert. I am almost crazy, as I have the gold fever shocking bad.”
B. P. Kloozer, a California soldier


“The big excitement swept all Tennessee like a fire in prairie grass. Some men that was tied with families actually set down and cried ‘cause they couldn’t go.” J. H. Beadle


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 ship gave a lurch and threw me down. I rolled and pitched and tumbled against one side of the room and then turned two or three somersets and struck my shoulders against the other side.” Horace C. Snow


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

Life in California's boom towns wasn't altogether user-friendly either:

“In Stockton we slept on barrel stays with scanty blankets and well filled with athletic and courageous and determined fleas.” Horace C. Snow

Here’s an excerpt of some testimony in 1692 that convinced a panel of judges to hang Bridget Bishop, a woman from Salem who was accused of being a witch:

“ I did see a black thing Jump into the window & stood Just before my face…the body of itt looked like a Munky only the feete ware like a Cocks feete w'th Claws… I strook at it with a stick butt felt noe substance … then it vanished away and I opened the back dore and Espied Bridget Bushop in her orchard goeing to wards her house. I Againe did see the creture … itt sprang back and flew over the apple tree flinging the dust w'th its feet against my stomake, upon which I was struck dumb…” John Louder

Go figure.

When America’s 13 Colonies wanted to break away from British rule, colorful oratory abounded. Benjamin Franklin always had a way with words. Upon signing the Declaration of Independence, he told his compatriots:


“We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

And when the war finally ended and he helped work out the peace treaty, he said “There never was a good war or a bad peace.”


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!”

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?”

(There were slaves in all 13 Colonies)

Scientist Charles Darwin was vehemently opposed to slavery, and during his journey around the world as a young man, he decried the practice in his journal every chance he got:

“How weak are the arguments of those who maintain that slavery is a tolerable evil! The Corcovado is notorious for runaway slaves. We met three villainous looking ruffians armed to the teeth. They were slave-hunters & receive so much for every man dead or alive whom they may take.”

And finally, Lewis and Clark overcame dangers galore, but this ever-present danger wasn't their fave or their most glam. Here’s William Clark on June 17th 1804 (note the different spellings) :

"The ticks and musquiters are verry troublesom"

and on July 26: "the Boat roled in such a manner that I could do nothing & was Compelled to go to the woods and combat with the Musquetors"

and on September 7: " 8 falloe deer & 3 Buffalow killed today. Muskeetors verry troublesom."

On July 15 1806, Meriwether Lewis said: "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."

Sorry, Lewis and Clark, but I love this stuff.

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.

April Fool's Day Edition: Ghost Books

Amazon.com thinks I wrote a book with basketball player Chamique Holdsclaw. I never did, but if you go to Amazon, you’ll find the title. Chamique Holdsclaw: My Story, published in July 2003 for readers 9-12, available from one seller for $68. It was published by Tandem Library, they say, and weighs 8.8 ounces. There are no customer reviews.

ARGH! Every time I see this listing, I want to scream, “I NEVER WROTE THE BOOK!” What happened was this: A little over a decade ago, I was in talks with a publisher whose parent company was contracting for a memoir by Holdsclaw, who was a standout athlete at the University of Tennessee with a seemingly great career ahead of her in the WNBA. The publisher wanted to include a kids’ book by Holdsclaw in their contract, and wanted to know if I’d be the co-author. I was honored and excited, but things fell through. Jennifer Frey, the author who co-wrote Holdsclaw’s adult memoir, ended up writing the kids’ book as well. Booklist liked Chamique Holdsclaw: My Story, by Holdsclaw and Frey, concluding that Chamique “comes across as an inspiring role model for readers, no matter what their dreams.”

Even so, this ghost book continues to follow me around on Amazon and on other book sites throughout the Web. What happened, it seems, is that the publisher released the marketing information before a contract was signed. Once it’s released, I don’t think there’s any way to take it back. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s annoying! And now I seem to have another ghost book out there. Recently, I’ve seen a posting on eBay for Bloomers and Hoops, a brand new book available for $16.94. But I can assure you that there will be no Bloomers and Hoops. That was the working title of my new book, Basketball Belles: How Two Teams and One Scrappy Player Put Women’s Hoops on the Map. Once again, the marketing information was released before the book was final, and I suppose the title will be floating out there forever. I guess it’s the universe’s own April Fools joke on me.

Do any writers out there have ghosts books like these? Has anyone tried to track down books that don’t actually exist?

------

On a completely different note, I wanted to announce the relaunch of my Web site, suemacy.com. It’s now up and running, with some new features and some useful links to the content covered in my books. (But alas, nothing on Chamique Holdsclaw.) Come on by and check it out.

Whither Poetry? (an update)

National Poetry Month starts tomorrow, so today's post is poetry-related, though still all about nonfiction.

One of the things I've noticed during school visits at both the elementary and middle school level is that kids really respond to poetry. The most interesting thing about that? The kids who are the school's "problem" kids often pay the closest attention. They are able to follow long poems such as "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, and can sort out what's going on in poems with obscure (or nonsense) words in them, such as "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll.

There's no reason that poetry has to be relegated to a one-week unit, assuming that the teacher has time to get to it. And this is because there are poems and poetry collections that fit extremely well into existing school curricula.

Studying geography? Try Got Geography!, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins. Studying the planets? Don't miss Douglas Florians Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars or And Then There Were Eight by Laura Purdie Salas. Studying explorers or pioneers? Try Trailblazers: Poems of Discovery by Bobbi Katz.

Studying Civil Rights? Try A Wreath for Emmett Till or Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World by Marilyn Nelson, Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color by Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson, Birmingham 1963 or Becoming Billie Holliday or Dear Mr. Rosenfeld by Carole Boston Weatherford.

Studying animals and/or habitat? Try Valerie Worth's Animal Poems, illustrated by I.N.K. blogger Steve Jenkins, The Seldom Ever Shady Glades by Sue Van Wassenhove, If Not for the Cat by Jack Prelutsky, Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre (again illustrated by Steve Jenkins), Feathers by Eileen Spinelli, The Company of Crows by Marilyn Singer, The Cuckoo's Haiku: and Other Birding Poems by Michael J. Rosen, or Mites to Mastodons by Maxine Kumin (or one of many more books on the topic).

Studying natural science? By all means, pick up one of these books by Joyce Sidman: Ubiquitous, Dark Emperor: And Other Poems of the Night, Song of the Water Boatman, Butterfly Eyes: And Other Secrets of the Meadow. Or try something like Shape Me a Rhyme by Jane Yolen or Chatter, Sing, Roar, Buzz: Poems About the Rain Forest by Laura Purdie Salas.

Interested in studying biographies? There's Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali by Charles R. Smith, Jr., Your Own, Sylvia: a verse portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill, The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography in Poems of Juan Francisco Manzano by Margarite Engle, Becoming Billie Holliday by Carole Boston Weatherford, Eureka! Poems About Inventors by Joyce Sidman, or Jazz ABZ by Wynton Marsalis (biographies of jazz greats).

Is it history you're after? Try The Brothers' War: Civil War Voices in Verse or VHERSES: A Celebration of Outstanding Women by J. Patrick Lewis or America at War, edited by Lee Bennet Hopkins

The point is that for nearly any area of study, a poetry collection can be found that relates to it. And it should be found, because kids who have a hard time sitting still for prose lectures pay attention really well to poems. I suspect it's because of the use of lots of imagery and active verbs, the rhythm and, when used, rhyme, that grabs and holds the attention of kids who don't or can't always listen to prose.

Playing games with information

I’ve never been much of a video gamer, though my memory of playing Pong for the first time in the early 70s remains oddly vivid. To my high school-aged self, Dungeons & Dragons with its funny-looking polyhedral dice seemed too complicated and dorky, so I left it to my little brother to play. Other than a few episodes of playing Solitaire, Pac-Man, or Joust, my one-liner attitude about gaming for the last couple of decades has been:
“It’s a waste of time.”

Meanwhile, the video and computer game industry has charged ahead without me: over 65% of U.S. households have video games, 40% of all players are female, 26% are over age 50, and the industry reportedly brought in $10.5 billion in 2009 alone.
statistics source

What has inspired me to rethink this topic is Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, by Jane McGonigal,Ph.D. The author and game designer explains the psychological reasons behind the popularity of games as well as discussing their potential to be used for the common good. The alternate reality games she specializes in “...challenge players to tackle real-world problems at a planetary-scale: hunger, poverty, climate change, or global peace...” Examples shown on her web site include World Without Oil, SuperBetter (to facilitate recovery from illness or injury), and EVOKE, a social network game designed to help empower people all over the world to invent creative solutions to our most urgent social problems. The book’s title is based on a common experience of many players...that reality is simply not as satisfying as gaming. McGonigal details a variety of techniques to jazz up real life in order to engage people the way that successful games do.

The connection to my own projects lies in finding the overlap between the qualities and objectives she describes and my own process of writing informational books for children and related activities. At minimum, a game must have these four components:

• A goal or series of goals the players work to achieve
• The rules that restrict how the goal may be reached yet foster creativity and strategic thinking to do so
• The feedback system which lets players know how close they are to achieving the goal
• Voluntary participation: the players must choose to undertake the work involved to play

Work? Yes, work. It takes time and effort to learn all the rules and strategy to play a game, find secret clues, climb to higher levels, and so on. It’s the combination of the above factors that grab the players emotionally and why it’s fun to play. Even though it takes time and effort, it doesn’t feel like like a “job.” Among the several types of work detailed in the book, mental and discovery work seem the most relevant to nonfiction. Revving up one’s mental muscles to solve a problem is very satisfying, as is the joy of exploring unfamiliar places, people, and things. It’s invigorating....and yes, fun, to be engrossed in those experiences.

Some common game elements are:
Quests motivate players to keep going. Is there a way to tie a quest to a nonfiction book? Levels are increasingly difficult sections of the game that players reach by solving problems, dodging obstacles, or otherwise improving upon their performance. Could a nonfiction book have levels? Another factor that’s increasingly important in gaming is teamwork, where people collaborate to help each other succeed in the game. How can teamwork be brought to the nonfiction experience? These concepts, a description of a public game-based school, and much more are why reading Reality is Broken has been so inspiring.

One of the reasons I’m pursuing the gaming angle is because of an episode that happened a few years ago. Two brothers were given one of my picture books about space...it was the weekend, they associated “books” with school, and therefore neither one even wanted to look at it. They’re both good students, but... Ouch! I hate to think that a kid has to steel himself to tolerate reading a book because he anticipates that it will be so unrewarding. Games are rewarding (that’s obvious!) so how to harness that quality is the question.

Can I come up with a game based on one of my books, say The Shocking Truth about Energy? After covering electricity generation and the main sources of energy in use today, the book ends with four pages of energy-saving ideas. How about a game that would not only help reduce the use of fossil fuels but would increase exercise time for students? For the 10,000* Mile Quest, players add up their bicycle, running, and walking mileage either individually or in teams made up of classrooms, grades, or schools, depending on how the game is organized. Players can use a phone app such as EveryTrail to track miles or calculate the length of routes using online tools such as MapQuest. There could be a group web site with a graph or other feedback so everyone can see their progress. Gasoline NOT burned because of the game could also be shown. A group chat area would allow players to exchange ideas about how to get more miles faster. Secret items could be hidden along various routes to allow players to score bonus points. The game could last a week, a month, or an entire school year, with various milestones along the way to celebrate. This needs more refining but that’s the general idea. 
*or whatever number seems appropriate

What about adding gaming strategies to digital books or apps? For the last few months I’ve been researching ebooks and apps with an eye to the multiple ways authors can utilize them and am intrigued with the possibilities of incorporating motion and other types of interactivity. A few examples...presenting information could be made much more fun and gamelike by hiding it at first, so the reader has to search for it. Wouldn’t it be nice to include a demonstration in many cases? I’m working on a math picture book right now in which it would be terrific to have a movable shape for readers to manipulate on certain pages. Or how about having the reader assemble something? To see an amazing example of an educational app that reportedly inspires students to delve deeply into the topic, check out Frog Dissection on Teachers with Apps. It’s not a game per se, but has many of the characteristics.

The typical fantasy world kind of game still doesn’t interest me, and probably never will...but using gaming concepts to showcase real information, engage readers, and even create solutions to genuine problems sounds like a game worth playing.

Loreen
my web site

The Urge to "Correct" History

I don’t often quote the ancient Greeks, mostly because I don’t know what they said, but there’s one Herodotus line that has always stuck with me. Describing the difficult craft of writing compelling, fact-based history, he said: "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all.” His solution, as he put it, was to “correct these defects,” by rearranging and inventing his way to a great story. Too bad non-fiction writers don’t have that luxury.

I’ve been wrestling with this problem recently, as I toss around ideas for possible book projects. It’s always fun to throw open my notebooks and let ideas I’ve jotted down over the years jump out and fight for attention. The bad part comes when I get excited about one of the stories, begin researching it, and realize I’m facing the old Herodotus dilemma.

Sometimes it’s a simple of matter of not knowing. Take pirates, for example. Everyone loves these thieving murderers (including my 4-year-old daughter), but there’s a serious shortage of primary sources, and hardly anything from the pirates’ own point of view. Even the best, most exhaustively researched adult pirate books are riddled with lines like, “Blackbeard may very well have said…” and “It was at this point that Bartholomew Roberts probably decided…” The most painful false lead of all involves an 11-year-old boy named John King. What we know is that in November 1716, somewhere in the Caribbean, King and his mother were on a ship that was boarded and plundered by the pirate Sam Bellamy. King declared he wanted to join Bellamy’s crew. His mom said no. The boy threatened to throw himself into the sea unless he was allowed to become a pirate. His mom let him go.

Shouldn’t this be the opening scene of an all-time great middle grade history book? The story has everything: a young protagonist, action, danger, glimpses into an exotic world, and, in the end, tragedy. In 2006 underwater archaeologists found the remains of Bellamy’s ship, which sank off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717. Among the wreckage were the bones of a boy of about 12. So King was on the ship for a year, and there’s no doubt his adventures during that year could pack a ripping non-fiction book. Only, we can’t know what those adventures were. With great reluctance, a writer of non-fiction has to pass on John King. Maybe put it on the list of historical fiction to write some day.

Then there’s the tantalizing tale of Elijah Nicholas Wilson, another adventure-seeking 11 year old. In the early 1850s, Wilson ran away from his frontier home (he was sick of herding sheep) to live with a Shoshone chief named Washakie and his family. He learned the language, learned to hunt buffalo like a young brave, and, best of all for my purposes, wrote a memoir called White Indian Boy, describing his years with the Shoshone.

For a brief exciting moment, I became convinced this had the makings of a fantastic kids’ history book. And Wilson’s book does have a lot of great stories, but are they the right stories? Well, Wilson comes across as kind of a jerk. He’s constantly fighting with other kids; he nearly sparks an intra-tribal war by smacking a girl in a squabble over a fishing pole. Though actually, these kinds of details make him sound like a real kid, which is a good thing.

The bigger issue is the one Herodotus spoke of, the fact that Wilson’s stories just don’t happen in the right order, or at all. That is, he gives us lots of brilliant slice-of-life scenes, but no narrative arc, no climax. He spends a couple of years with the Shoshone, then leaves for what he thinks will be a short visit home, and never returns to his Indian family. He goes on to have other adventures, including a stint as a Pony Express rider, but that’s another chapter of his life, and, quite unreasonably, not the part I care about. I really wish I could “correct these defects” by having Wilson marry a Shoshone girl, or help lead his adoptive people’s struggle to hold onto their traditional lands.

Or has my thinking become too Hollywood? Am I missing the more important point: that real life, meandering and messy, is more interesting than a perfectly structured plot? I don’t know. I just know that every time I visit a school, kids tell me they think history is boring. Now that’s a defect we definitely have to correct.

"What If?"

Esteemed non-fiction author Elizabeth Partridge recently wrote in her blog, Hot Tea and a Pencil, that she had just learned about an ancestor of the same name as herself who, in 1846, had been transported from England to Australia. Contemporary Elizabeth asked,

"What did this Elizabeth Partridge do that got her ten years in jail, swapped off for being sent to Australia? What was it like for her once she got there?

What if....

and a seed is planted. I don't know that I would ever take this any further, but it is exhilarating to have my mind tumble in a new direction.
What kind of random things have been making you think 'What if....?'"

Here is what I wrote as a comment:

Hi Elizabeth,

Since you asked what kinds of things make my mind ask, "What if?" I'll say that many of my own science and math picture books are based on "What if?" questions that I asked, going back to childhood:

"What if I could ride my bike to the Sun -- how long would it take?"

"How about if I rode to the distant stars?"

"What if I could ride to the end of the Universe? What would I find there? Would there be a wall with a sign: "END OF UNIVERSE--DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT"? (I really do remember imagining that sign, not because I really thought it could exist but as a way of expressing the mind-boggled feeling I got from contemplating the idea of a finite universe.)

"What if I could hop like a frog? How far could I go in proportion to my own body size?"

"What if someone filled an Olympic-size swimming pool with ice cream and I dived in--how long would it take me to eat my way through the pool?"

"If I grew to the height of a redwood tree, how high would a basketball hoop be if it elevated proportionally?"

And so on. In various ways, these musings ended up becoming books.

When I visit schools, the kids' top three questions are:

1) How old are you? (Teachers always say, "No, don't ask that question!")

2) How much money do you make? (Teachers say, "No, no! Never ask that question!")

and

3) Where do you get your ideas? (Teachers say, "That's a good question!")

I answer the first question by telling them what year I was born. (I don't mind if they know how old I am. How else will they learn what a 59-year old looks like compared to a 29-year old?) I answer the second question by telling them how much (little) I make on the sale of one book. And I answer the third question by telling children I get many of the ideas for my books from questions I asked when I was their age, and that they will get plenty of great ideas themselves if they wonder about the world. In other words, if they ask questions like, "What if?"

I also point out that I wrote about my love for the word "if" in my math alphabet book, G Is for Googol, under the letter "I" which, in my book, is for "If." With the word "if," I tell readers, you can imagine anything and sometimes you can use math to figure out what would happen if it were true.

I think parents and teachers (not to mention media providers) would do children and our future a great service if they encouraged wondering and the asking of questions rather than simply consuming and accepting information and stimuli. Children need to interact, not just imbibe, what the world sends their way. Our idea of interactivity has come to mean playing games invented by someone else rather than making our own observations, asking our own questions and finding answers through experiments (whether physical experiments or thought-experiments or both).

Case in point: I once met a 6th grade science teacher who had asked her students in a well-heeled public school to put some small piece of the natural world (a few plants and/or small animals) and temporarily transfer it to a contained environment (shoebox, glass jar, etc.) for an hour of observing, speculating, hypothesizing and experimenting. Everyone in the class thought the assignment was too hard. They didn't know what to do for an hour. The teacher lamented that if she had asked them to write a 10-page report on Einstein, no one would have batted an eye.

You might say the whole class -- or a whole generation -- has a "what if?" deficit.

What if we started a nationwide discussion on what to do about it? My two cents: more wondering, not more testing.