A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words

Well, maybe not 1,000, but even as a writer I can’t deny the power of a photograph. One click of a shutter release and BAM, we see a story. Photos capture drama (below, survivors from the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania). They convey emotion. Sometimes they offer clarity. At other times they fill us with questions. And that’s where the words come in (thank goodness, say the writers).

Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-19173

I owe at least two of my books to photos. I became so captivated by the Earnest Withers “I AM A MAN” image from Memphis 1968 that I wrote a whole book about it, Marching to the Mountaintop. Ditto for the “Blood Brothers” image of John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, following their beating as Freedom Riders on May 20, 1961. (See page 42 of this title.)

I’m not sure which I love more, writing or photo research. Both are passions for me, so I am lucky to work in a genre that seamlessly weaves the two media into a powerful forum for conveying the stories of history. If you read these words on their magical 12-12-12 posting date, you can imagine me engaged in photo research. I’ll be in Washington, D.C., that day, wrapping up three days of research for my latest project which, come to think of it, started with an image, too. (Or at least it started during an earlier round of photo research when my efforts to track down the background of one picture led to the discovery of a whole new story from the past.)

 

Photo courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-01901

So what is photo research like? Truthfully it’s about as glamorous as a day of writing, which is to say not very. By the end of the day my back aches for bending over images. My mind is so warped by time traveling through thousands of windows into the past that it is jarring to step out into real time. My sleep is animated by disjointed pictures as my mind races to process all the scenes it has observed.

 

But photo research is also as rewarding as writing. That moment when you revise to the perfect conclusion is matched by the discovery of a gotta-have-it photograph. I suspect there is some chemical parallel between gambling and photo research, because that rush of excitement from finding one great picture becomes the fuel for the next few hours of fruitless searching.

 

Sometimes I do photo research using on-line databases. Sometimes I’m on site, glove-adorned, paging through carefully catalogued original prints. And sometimes I’m cut loose in an archive of dog-eared, we-should-organize-these-some-day gems. I become a treasure hunter, gently sifting through the sheets of chemical-infused paper to find just the right shades of sepia and cream. Here a dramatic smile. There a scene filled with action. Now a glimpse of a forgotten figure. Then a fresh look at a favorite icon. Sorting the wheat from the chaff, the powerful from the mundane.

 

Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-03177

One of my favorite places to conduct photo research is the Library of Congress, and I will be there at least twice during my current research trip. Those on-site trips offer access to materials that are otherwise inaccessible, but these days it’s getting easier and easier to find treasures using the online databases of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Collection. I’m a big booster of this site, especially when I do school visits. Anyone who hasn’t used it should kill an hour or two playing around with the search engines. More and more material is now accessible off-site, and any images that can be downloaded from a remote location can be used with a clear conscience as material in the public domain. These are our tax dollars at work, people. It’s wonderful! Enjoy!

 

P.S.: I’ve developed an online tutorial for using the collections of the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs division. For more information, visit the Muckrakers page of my author website and follow the tab marked “Behind the scenes—photo research.”

Paperback Writer? -- Guest Post from Karen Blumenthal

In the world of nonfiction for young people, California librarian Jonathan Hunt is one of my gurus. His reviews and essays are always incredibly insightful, and his latest article in Horn Book is no exception. 

His thoughtful look at readers of children’s and young adult nonfiction comes on the heels of two recent experiences, the Texas Library Association annual conference and the upcoming paperback publication of my book Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition.

I was at TLA because Bootleg is part of the new Spirit of Texas Middle School program, which recognizes authors with a Texas connection. In addition, my book Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different is on this year’s Lone Star list for middle-schoolers, and I had a chance to visit with some of the amazing librarians who devote their precious spare time to reading and picking books for these lists.

One of them surprised me with her description of her readers. Her middle school students are “insulted” by heavily illustrated nonfiction and almost shun them, she told me. Instead, they gravitate to smaller books like Steve Jobs because it’s neither too thick nor too thin, and it is sparingly illustrated.

Hunt said almost the same thing in his essay, noting that “too many photographs can rob author and reader alike of the opportunity to exercise their imagination.”

As an avid nonfiction reader who would appreciate more photos and relevant images in adult books, I always assumed illustrations brought a greater depth and visual dimension to a true story. But they have another side effect: To properly display images, nonfiction children’s books are somewhat larger than fiction books, which gives them the appearance of either picture books (babyish!) or coffee table books (and who wants to actually read those?)

In fact, Hunt makes the case for smaller “novelistic” book sizes for factual stories, saying that they circulate easily in his library, without any special selling from him.

That’s encouraging news for Bootleg, which is the first of my four books for young people to go from hardcover to trade paperback.  (Steve Jobs was published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback.)

Lauren Burniac, who oversees the paperback imprint Square Fish, says the Bootleg paperback, which will be out in late July, will be smaller in size than the original, which itself had a smaller trim size than many contemporary nonfiction books.

Paperback edition

While many young adult and children’s novels are published in paperback about a year after their hardcover publication, few nonfiction books make the leap. But with Common Core Standards calling for more students to read nonfiction and with school and library budgets tight, Burniac says that roughly a quarter of her paperback list is now nonfiction, up from just two or three titles before.

“We’re making a real effort to bring nonfiction into paperback,” she says, with the hope that a lower price will bring the books not just into libraries, but also into classrooms.  (And, I hope, maybe on to home bookshelves!)
            Will a paperback nonfiction book in a smaller size attract more buyers and more readers?

Or does that old publishing saw hold, that people choose fiction for the authors and nonfiction for the subject?

What do you think?

A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words

Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-19173

Well, maybe not 1,000, but even as a writer I can’t deny the power of a photograph. One click of a shutter release and BAM, we see a story. Photos capture drama (left, survivors from the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania). They convey emotion. Sometimes they offer clarity. At other times they fill us with questions. And that’s where the words come in (thank goodness, say the writers).

I owe at least two of my books to photos. I became so captivated by the Earnest Withers “I AM A MAN” image from Memphis 1968 that I wrote a whole book about it, Marching to the Mountaintop. Ditto for the “Blood Brothers” image of John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, following their beating as Freedom Riders on May 20, 1961. (See page 42 of this title.)

I’m not sure which I love more, writing or photo research. Both are passions for me, so I am lucky to work in a genre that seamlessly weaves the two media into a powerful forum for conveying the stories of history. If you read these words on their magical 12-12-12 posting date, you can imagine me engaged in photo research. I’ll be in Washington, D.C., that day, wrapping up three days of research for my latest project which, come to think of it, started with an image, too. (Or at least it started during an earlier round of photo research when my efforts to track down the background of one picture led to the discovery of a whole new story from the past.)

Photo courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-01901

So what is photo research like? Truthfully it’s about as glamorous as a day of writing, which is to say not very. By the end of the day my back aches for bending over images. My mind is so warped by time traveling through thousands of windows into the past that it is jarring to step out into real time. My sleep is animated by disjointed pictures as my mind races to process all the scenes it has observed.

But photo research is also as rewarding as writing. That moment when you revise to the perfect conclusion is matched by the discovery of a gotta-have-it photograph. I suspect there is some chemical parallel between gambling and photo research, because that rush of excitement from finding one great picture becomes the fuel for the next few hours of fruitless searching.

Sometimes I do photo research using on-line databases. Sometimes I’m on site, glove-adorned, paging through carefully catalogued original prints. And sometimes I’m cut loose in an archive of dog-eared, we-should-organize-these-some-day gems. I become a treasure hunter, gently sifting through the sheets of chemical-infused paper to find just the right shades of sepia and cream. Here a dramatic smile. There a scene filled with action. Now a glimpse of a forgotten figure. Then a fresh look at a favorite icon. Sorting the wheat from the chaff, the powerful from the mundane.

Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-03177

One of my favorite places to conduct photo research is the Library of Congress, and I will be there at least twice during my current research trip. Those on-site trips offer access to materials that are otherwise inaccessible, but these days it’s getting easier and easier to find treasures using the online databases of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Collection. I’m a big booster of this site, especially when I do school visits. Anyone who hasn’t used it should kill an hour or two playing around with the search engines. More and more material is now accessible off-site, and any images that can be downloaded from a remote location can be used with a clear conscience as material in the public domain. These are our tax dollars at work, people. It’s wonderful! Enjoy!

P.S.: I’ve developed an online tutorial for using the collections of the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs division. For more information, visit the Muckrakers page of my author website and follow the tab marked “Behind the scenes—photo research.”

Searching for Noble

I’ve been distracted. Hurricane Sandy – terrible name, but then, is there ever a good one – knocked out our electricity, hot water, and heat. Then the election raised our blood pressures and anxieties. Trolley cars grew in my stomach, turning round and round. [That’s a Yiddish curse my paternal grandmother used to say.] Though our neighborhood was lucky compared to others in New York and New Jersey, it was a difficult time to concentrate on writing. We were lucky too, our Maple tree tipped over but is otherwise intact.

During this period I had a front row seat observing neighbors and strangers at their most noble. People shared food, batteries, hugs, and information. Whoever was going somewhere bright offered to bring back goods to those in darkness.

Real people who help others is a leitmotif in many of our books. We ask the questions, “When faced with adversity does one rise up or fall down? What does a person have to do to live a noble life?” This theme is not only an important one for kids, but it is usually implanted inside a damn good story.

“Noble,” stayed with me throughout the hurricane and election. I asked myself which nonfiction stories for kids include the search for virtue? I called my friend and YA librarian Karlan Sick to brainstorm titles because Karlan remembers every book that has ever been written. She talked about the obvious greats who made a difference in society: FDR, Eleanor, Jane Addams, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Jr. But these were not the first people she came up with. Her first title happened to be one of my all-time favorites: Russell Freedman’s Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor. 

The book is about the dazzling photographer Louis Hine, and how his photographs changed the way people think about working children. 

In the early twentieth century Hine, who was a photographer, sociologist, and a New York City schoolteacher, documented working children on behalf of the National Child Labor Committee. His powerful, heart-wrenching photographs helped to awaken America’s conscience and later contributed to social reform with much needed labor laws. Unfortunately Hine never knew what an impact he made. Museums had no interest in his photographs; he survived on welfare, and died penniless.

Frankly, I cannot understand why he is not on EVERY list of great photographers. If you click on his name you will see more images, many of which are very well known.

Russell Freedman is a superb writer and a wonderful colleague. His impeccably researched books sure influenced me. I particularly love the way he includes old photographs as both documents and art. When I set out to write a modern version of working children, Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery, he graciously introduced me to the director of the National Child Labor Committee, who gave me access to their files and Hine’s photographs. What a day that was, going through some of Hine’s original prints. [Sadly, Iqbal is out of print.] 

            Iqbal Masih’s story along with the “crusaders” who helped free him from his thekedar at the carpet factory in Pakistan where he worked from age four to ten, is eerily similar to Freedman’s American kids: Exploitation supported by unknowing shoppers. Economics skewed to favor the rich. Danger to those who try to bring about change. Sound familiar? Half a world away … half a century away … things haven’t changed for many. No wonder our subtitles are so similar – I just this moment realized that.

Louis Hine was noble. Iqbal Masih was noble. And so were crusaders who risked so much to speak out for what is right. What have you written, or read, that inspired you to write about someone noble? Can we make a list?

The Math Behind Poetry

Consider a series of names. 

Of fruit. 

And the few words that rhyme with those fruit. 

Or rhyme with some kind of descriptive about fruit.

Now consider which fruit names bounce and bump against each other in a tongue-pleasing way. 

Next consider which fruit are in season. In. The. Same. Month.

And can be sourced by someone in a town with no Whole Foods.

Consider which fruit happen to be in season and available in the many weeks a certain person struggling with permutations is off speaking at ALA, a conference, or photographing whales in Canada. (Totally worth it for the whales!)

Now, try to take the picture in between the moments when other people are buying fruit for the shocking purpose of actually eating it. Do not interrupt the commerce of the kind fruit and vegetable vendors who put up with your crazy ways even back during the Rah, Rah, Radishes adventure. 

If you’ve had to buy an entire case of cactus, calling all over town, or found longyans in Ohio, or lychee in Chicago, in Chinatown, make sure the photo is good. Because you might not get that chance again. 

Make sure that the fruit all looks fresh.

If it is a slice of watermelon, dab it often because it will soon begin to sweat and melt like a beauty pageant contestant under hot lights. 

Oh, sweet little fruities. 

Now, retake some of the photos because you and the editor have suddenly decided to shift a word, which has knocked out another stanza, which has caused a cascade of unforeseen PERMUTATIONS. 

Permutations = a poet’s daily life.  Because April is poetry month and I'm in the blog therapy over whether or not I might actually be a poet (see Katie Davis's blog tomorrow, April 27th.) it seems a good time to understand choice and variability and order. Poetry is math. Poetry is permutations. 

For some of the permutations, I have stories of misadventures and photos. For instance, we did not call the book Paw Paw Pomegranate, as my husband suggested, because of the photo below. I had to do a conference and when I returned all the wild Paw Paw gatherers in Michigan could only find this...um...sad looking, though surely delicious example of the fruit. 

Paw paw not looking like a cover fruit. Sorry!

The best part of the book was that it gave me to poke into places I’ve never been. I was a culinary tourist in my own town, and every other town I visited last year. While in New Orleans for ALA I heard of a far off market, the Vietnamese market, and got a taxi to take me there. Loree Griffin Burns, a nonfiction author adventurer I’d just met, came along for moral support. Oh, how exotic we were...to find such a place tucked away where no one would know it existed. (It is awesome. The seeds of many of the fruits and veggies were originally brought to Louisiana by Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and now a huge urban farm has been created to sell the vegetables to major New Orleans restaurants. Yes, I am pondering doing a book just about that.)

When we showed up to our secret spot after the $50 taxi ride with a doubtful driver, we found an entire television crew was set up and rolling to shoot a segment for Travel Channel “Bizarre Foods” episode with Andrew Zimmern. Scoop! While we watched, he tasted breadfruit. While rolling, he reached behind the camera and handed me a slice of breadfruit to taste. Here I was preparing to be the photographer but I ended up having to sign a photo waiver for his crew. Ooh, turnabout! No, I did not make the show. But you can see the priest and breadfruit tasting scene in one of his New Orleans shows.  None of my many photos from there made the book. But it was fun.

How New Orleans Vietnamese Market looks
 before you wipe your glasses (and camera)

Camera now wiped after emerging from air conditioning

Bizarre Foods crew got there first. Scoop!

Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods tasting breadfruit

whole breadfruit

The bonus of this crazy exercise in permutations? There’s a lot of leftover material. Oh, sad and soggy stanzas. Oh the fruit parties I had to throw with all the leftovers from shoots and from buying produce from the grocers and farmers. Oh, and Go, Go, Grapes: a Fruit Chant is coming out May 22nd. Yippee!

Yeah, I was finally done with permutations. That’s what I thought on Dec 24th of last year when for the first time in two years I went to the Farmer’s Market without my camera. Ah! How relaxing just to buy vegetables. Uh oh. Saw some hickory nuts and fava beans and had an idea. An hour later, I was at it again. Soon after, it was under contract.

Permutations.  Here we go again!

Visual Storytelling—Part Two

Back in October, I posted about the beginning of my visual storytelling process for my next book, COURAGE HAS NO COLOR. This book is about a group of people who should be as well known as the Tuskegee Airmen, but are fairly unknown. The Triple Nickles were the first black paratroopers in WWII and proved to the military that black men could be paratroopers. Their story is a fascinating and complex one, and tracking down photos for this book has been the hardest of any book I have written. It has taken several years of playing detective and unearthing photos one by one from varied and far-flung sources. Now I am at the other end of the process—not nearly the end, but getting closer. I have inventoried all the photographs I collected and have decided to use, chapter by chapter, and keyed the manuscript with the numbers I assigned them. What does keying mean? It means I go through each chapter and note which image I want to use and the text it should be placed nearest.

Then I go back through my inventory and see if there are photos that matter to me that I haven’t found a place for yet and I take another pass. This may mean replacing one I think has more storytelling potential than something else if I can’t fit them both. It’s a tricky balance as you physically can’t fit too many images on a spread without overwhelming the design—or the designer!
I then go through the next pass for a different visual feature—pull-out quotes. This means I am looking through my own text with an eye toward the reader who will be skimming the pages to get a sense of what this book is about—which lines or quotes do I want to highlight that will lead my reader through the story. Again, there will potentially be more than the designer can fit, so I have to choose with intention and know they won’t all make it in. There will be another pass, and another, and another, so I’ll be able to make changes, but this is the big first important sweep that begins to transform a manuscript into a book.

Meanwhile, my talented designer is working on sample pages with the images I have sent. Is there a font we want to use that will help convey the time of the book, or the emotion in it? How do we make things flow? How will we fit everything in? And, of course, a hundred other design concerns and questions I know nothing about—I will simply get to see what her handiwork and vision produces!

What we are all doing at this stage is looking at the book from a visual perspective. We want to know that we are assisting the readers for that moment when they will inevitably browse through to see if they even want to read this book. Are we making an impact? Is it clear what this book is about? Have we set the right tone? Do they want to turn the page? As we head into this phase of production, it is always astonishing and wonderful to me how many minute details there are to consider, and how much they impact the final product. I’m excited!

STUMPED

I’m stumped. Here I sit pondering which words of wisdom I should expound upon in today’s blog, only I can’t think of any. All traces of wisdom I may have possessed at one time or another have rolled out of my left ear, scrammed outta the conga line, and headed off to the beach.

NOOO!!! It’s already paragraph #2, and still I’m stumped! Should I write about strange-but-true factoids, like the factoid that says manhole covers are round because if they were rectangular or square, they would fall into the manhole? Nah. Then I’d have to think up a lot more strange factoids. Besides, does anybody care about manhole covers? Not really.

Should I write about adding humor to nonfiction books for kids? Nah. I do love the idea of adding humor to my books; everything is so much more memorable when it’s funny. Except that today, I can’t think of a single funny thing to say in a book.

If I make a lot of paragraphs, there will be more spaces in this blog and it will take up a lot of room.

There. I just made another paragraph.

Look, I did it again!! :-) Now I’ll probably get kicked out of the blog! :-( All my faithful readers will accuse me of snorting something strange and my reputation will be toast. Maybe I can just use a lot of exclamation points and take up even more space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or I could just find a humongous piece of art and plug it in because it could swallow up entire paragraphs worth of space, like this:



OR IF IT'S NOT TOO OBVIOUS, I CAN JUST USE REALLY BIG TYPE.

Oh. I guess that was a little too obvious.

Maybe I can say that quotes are a good thing to use in your books. That would actually be true, and then I could go look up a bunch of cool quotes. That could take up a whole lot of space too. OK, why not. Here’s a quote from Will Rogers (1879-1935):

“It’s awful hard to get people interested in corruption unless they can get some of it.”

(I added the dates after Will Rogers' name to take up space.)

It’s kinda like coming up with an idea for a new book. It’s kinda like brain freeze. Or writer’s block.

Still stumped in Virginia; over and out.

Chasing Windmills: The Sequel

In 1995 I wrote my first book The Wind At Work, a history of windmills, and sent it to Chicago Review Press. They liked it, but replied that all their children’s books include activities. Would I be willing to write some? Would I!

Creating activities was fun, relating windmills to science, creative writing, drawing and painting, sewing, cooking, singing, environmental research, and community action. Who knew?

Researching way back then

All this took place back in the Dark Ages, AKA pre–internet.

To research the book I read books and more books, using local and university libraries, interlibrary loans, and used bookstores. I traveled to the Netherlands, the American Midwest, and a wind turbine factory. To find photographs, paintings, etchings, and the like I searched through books. I visited and/or wrote to historical societies, the Library of Congress, tourist sites, and libraries. I received originals and photocopies and then sent purchase and permission letters, all by snail mail. And finally I sent off packages of photographs, slides, drawings, etc. to the publisher, all printed on paper!

In those pre-free-long-distance-phone-plan days, I spent a small fortune on long distance telephone calls interviewing windmill people, and trying to locate the addresses and phone numbers of restored windmills in towns all around the US and Canada, for the appendix "Where to Find Windmills."

Then in 1997, it all came together in The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills. Like my first love, this book holds a special place in my heart. Yes, I went on to others, leaving it behind, making longer commitments, but the memory of my first kiss on my name on my book lingers on…..

Sidebar: The Wind at Work has stayed in print for nearly fifteen years. Let’s put our hands together for small presses in general, and Chicago Review Press in particular. I visited their offices in 1997 and again this summer. They have expanded from one floor to an entire building in downtown Chicago, and are doing very well, thank you. I plan to interview CRP publisher, Cynthia Sherry, in a future blog.

Fast forward to 2011

I’d been thinking of doing an updated version of The Wind at Work for a while, for the section on wind turbines was woefully out of date. Last spring, following the earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan, I emailed Cynthia and….. the warehouse was low on stock. Could I do a new edition for 2012 publication? Could I!

I spent the summer reading, visiting wind farms, interviewing people, and searching for new photos, graphs, and charts. But I neither sent not received one letter by snail mail, visited no libraries, and read not one book. I did 100% of my research online. Why? Because that’s where the information lives.

I browsed the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report that won the Nobel prize; material from American, Canadian, and Europeans Wind Energy Associations, Global Wind Energy Council, American Lung Association, U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Audubon Society, and many more sources. I watched videos and read reports, scientific studies, congressional hearing statements, newspaper stories from around the world, and more – all at my computer. I’ve created some new activities for the new book. These and some of the old activities also use internet resources.

As for new illustrations – all online. Not only contemporary material, but historical photos as well.Since I wrote the first book, Steve Jacobs a scion of the Jacobs Wind Electric Company, found photos as far back as the 1920s and put them on their website, and on Flickr. A piece of history I could only describe in words in 1997, I can illustrate in 2012. As for “Where to Find Windmills,” I didn’t make one phone call, I just googled them all.

Sidebar: As I began my photo research, I unearthed old paper files from a box in a closet and found the manila folder marked “picture permissions.” With trembling hands, I plucked a letter from dozens nestled there. I let out a huge Hallelujah when I saw the words “I hereby grant Gretchen Woelfle…. license to reproduce in all editions of the book…” Those six precious words saved me weeks of work. I sent a silent blessing to the forgotten hero who helped me compose that permission letter back in 1997.

How on Earth…..

As I worked on the new The Wind at Work, I wondered – rather rhetorically and not for the first time – how I, and others, ever wrote books without the internet.

Despite all the above, I am writing a paper book – one that Chicago Review Press will publish in three electronic formats as well: kindle, e-pub, and pdf files. Of what use will my book be, as it begins to go out of date as soon as it’s published? An example, I hope. I read, analyzed, and interpreted the raw material on the web, and I hope to encourage students to do the same as the wind energy field changes week by week – using my book, along with the amazing electronic library we have at our fingertips.